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LATimes: Groups to fight bill blockade

While more than 30,000 people marveled at classic cars and grooved to
Dick Dale’s guitar licks, Armen Carapetian did what he could to make
sure Congress continued to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.

At Glendale’s Cruise Night on Saturday, Carapetian and other members of
the Armenian National Committee circulated petitions encouraging the
Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives to back off
of its objection to recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The White
House also opposes the bill.

And so begins the fight to save the Schiff Amendment to a foreign aid
bill.

On Thursday, the House approved an amendment to the Foreign Operations
Appropriations Bill sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Glendale) that
would prevent Turkey from using foreign aid funds to lobby against a
House resolution that would recognize the Armenian Genocide from 1915
to 1923.

The amendment is more symbolic than substantive.
Foreign countries are not allowed to use such funds to lobby Congress
for anything. But by proposing the vote in a late session Thursday,
Schiff brought a genocide-related vote to the House floor for the first
time.

“Something should be done,” said George Asaker, sitting
outside at a Brand Boulevard coffee shop. “They recognized the Jewish
[Holocaust], they should recognize the Armenian Genocide and anything
else.”

From 1915 to 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
the Ottoman Turks. Turkish officials claim the number of deaths is
overstated, and that the deaths were not the result of genocide.
Because Turkey is a military ally, the United States has never
acknowledged it as a genocide.

Bush Administration officials
immediately began fighting Schiff’s amendment. The State Department,
Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Leader
Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) all
issued statements condemning Schiff’s amendment and promising to remove
the amendment from the final version of the bill. The Senate must
approve its version of the bill, and then a joint Senate-House
committee will piece together the final version.

In Glendale,
Carapetian and others began circulating their petitions, hoping enough
support could persuade the Republicans to back off. They collected
1,500 in the Glendale area. Through the Armenian National Committee’s
website, another 10,000 people signed online petitions, which were
faxed directly to the offices of Hastert, DeLay and Blunt.

“The
House leadership and the president, unfortunately, don’t see this as an
important issue,” said Carapetian, the government relations director
for the Armenian National Committee’s Western Region. “They are willing
to disrespect over a million of their own citizens and residents of
this country for the sake of relations with a country that is really
not a true ally of the U.S.

“We’ve been getting a lot of phone
calls. We’ve gathered hopefully hundred of signatures here. The public
outcry has been focused on the congressional leaders.”

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