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ARMENIA: CONDI IN THE CROSSHAIRS
Giorgi Lomsadze
EurasiaNet.org
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64496
Nov 11 2011
NY
Many ethnic Armenians who read ex-US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice's recently published memoirs ("No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My
Years in Washington") are spitting fire over her descriptions of her
battles with the US-based Diaspora Armenian lobby.
Both in 1991 as a presidential aide (to then US President George Bush)
and in 2007 as secretary of state (under then President George W.
Bush), Rice worked to defeat the congressional push for recognizing
the World-War I-era slaughter of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks
as genocide.
While acknowledging the brutality and the scale of the bloodshed,
Rice writes that US recognition of the act as genocide would have
antagonized Turkey, a key strategic ally for the US. She argues
that she was guided by the raison d'etat that labels are best left
to historians.
Not in the view of American-Armenian Diaspora groups or many
Armenian-language news services, who have republished a letter from
Harut Sassounian, the publisher of Los Angeles' The California Courier,
a weekly catering to the city's sizable Diaspora Armenian community,
that advises Stanford University (where Rice now works as a political
science professor, a political economy professor at Stanford's business
school and, lastly, a public policy fellow) to inform the 57-year-old
foreign policy veteran that "genocide deniers are not welcome at one
of America's most distinguished institutions of higher learning."
Warming to his task, Sassounian charged that Rice had behaved as
"a spineless official of a banana republic" by allegedly caving in
to Turkish interests.
And Rice? Ever the diplomat, she's keeping quiet.
Giorgi Lomsadze
EurasiaNet.org
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64496
Nov 11 2011
NY
Many ethnic Armenians who read ex-US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice's recently published memoirs ("No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My
Years in Washington") are spitting fire over her descriptions of her
battles with the US-based Diaspora Armenian lobby.
Both in 1991 as a presidential aide (to then US President George Bush)
and in 2007 as secretary of state (under then President George W.
Bush), Rice worked to defeat the congressional push for recognizing
the World-War I-era slaughter of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks
as genocide.
While acknowledging the brutality and the scale of the bloodshed,
Rice writes that US recognition of the act as genocide would have
antagonized Turkey, a key strategic ally for the US. She argues
that she was guided by the raison d'etat that labels are best left
to historians.
Not in the view of American-Armenian Diaspora groups or many
Armenian-language news services, who have republished a letter from
Harut Sassounian, the publisher of Los Angeles' The California Courier,
a weekly catering to the city's sizable Diaspora Armenian community,
that advises Stanford University (where Rice now works as a political
science professor, a political economy professor at Stanford's business
school and, lastly, a public policy fellow) to inform the 57-year-old
foreign policy veteran that "genocide deniers are not welcome at one
of America's most distinguished institutions of higher learning."
Warming to his task, Sassounian charged that Rice had behaved as
"a spineless official of a banana republic" by allegedly caving in
to Turkish interests.
And Rice? Ever the diplomat, she's keeping quiet.