By Michael Doyle
Bee Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Armenian-American activists are lobbying furiously to hold on to a surprise victory they’ve won — albeit temporarily — on Capitol Hill.
With thousands of letters, the activists are urging House Republican leaders to allow a vote on legislation that uses the phrase “Armenian genocide.” Written by Mariposa Republican George Radanovich, the resolution so far has remained stalled.
“The leadership is very aware that we have the votes to pass it,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Pasadena said Wednesday, “and they are very concerned about the Turkish reaction.”
Schiff and Radanovich represent districts with some of the largest Armenian-American populations in the country. Along with 108 of their House colleagues, they are pushing this year’s version of what is commonly called the Armenian genocide resolution.
In a tactical strike that caught GOP leaders off-guard, Schiff last week restored the genocide issue to center stage. He won House approval late in the week for an amendment prohibiting Turkey from using U.S. foreign aid to lobby against the genocide resolution. Schiff’s amendment is mostly symbolic, as countries already are prohibited from using U.S. funds to lobby. It also is almost certainly doomed, as Republican leaders have vowed to kill it when House and Senate negotiators convene to resolve differences on the foreign-aid bill.
“We understand the political motivation behind the amendment, and for that reason, we will insist that it be dropped,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and House Minority Leader Roy Blunt said in a joint statement.
“Our relationship with Turkey is too important to us to allow it to be in any way damaged by a poorly crafted and ultimately meaningless amendment.”
Nonetheless, the Turkish aid amendment has succeeded in reinvigorating a debate that had seemed to fall dormant.
“It keeps the issue of the genocide resolution in front of the Congress, which I think is good, even if the language is stripped out,” Radanovich said Wednesday.
Several years ago, Radanovich won House approval for a similar measure that reduced U.S. aid to Turkey by the amount that Turkey spent on lobbying. That measure, too, was ultimately dropped from the final foreign-aid bill.
Schiff said that his Turkish aid amendment “places the House on record as recognizing the Armenian genocide.” Still, though that was his intent, his amendment adopted by voice vote does not specifically use the words “Armenian genocide.” For that, he and Radanovich are still pushing the separate resolution.
This year’s nonbinding resolution states the “the lessons of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, among others, will be used to help prevent future genocide.” On its face, the resolution commemorates the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987.
Fundamentally, though, the resolution’s basic purpose is to get the House on record as using the phrase “Armenian genocide.” That is why it is so controversial.
“We have no intention of scheduling [it] as reported out of the Judiciary Committee in April, during the remainder of this Congress,” Hastert and his two top House lieutenants said in their joint statement.
Four years ago, Hastert said otherwise. Meeting with Armenian-American leaders in Southern California, in a campaign swing designed to help the GOP incumbent whom Schiff was challenging, Hastert promised to bring Armenian genocide legislation up for a vote.
Hastert reneged at the last minute in 2000, citing a Clinton administration request.
Now, it’s the Bush administration that opposes any legislation referring to an Armenian genocide. The phrase refers to the period starting in 1915, when Armenians were killed during the final years of the Ottoman Empire — Armenian-American activists put the figure at 1.5 million, while Turkish officials say the number is much lower.
Numerous historians and authors have concluded the slaughter of Armenians meets the modern definition of genocide.
Armenian National Committee spokeswoman Elizabeth Chouldjian said Wednesday that at least 10,000 automatically generated letters have been faxed to Capitol Hill in recent days. The organization has also summoned the support of leading Armenian-Americans in the swing states that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential campaign.
Radanovich agreed that his Armenian-American constituents have been “very good” at pressing their point with GOP leaders, and he predicted a similar resolution will return next year.
“If the leadership follows through on its threat to not allow a vote, this issue will not go away,” Schiff said.
The reporter can be reached at mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com or (202) 383-0006.
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