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Obama Again Breaks Promise To Commemorate Armenian 'Genocide'

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  • Obama Again Breaks Promise To Commemorate Armenian 'Genocide'

    OBAMA AGAIN BREAKS PROMISE TO COMMEMORATE ARMENIAN 'GENOCIDE'
    By Olivier Knox

    ABC News
    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/obama-breaks-promise-commemorate-armenian-genocide/story?id=16202151
    April 24 2012

    One day after paying a solemn visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
    Museum, President Barack Obama on Tuesday called the mass killings
    of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915 "one of the
    worst atrocities of the 20th century" but again broke a 2008 campaign
    promise to label the tragedy "genocide."

    "We honor the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians who were brutally
    massacred or marched to their deaths in the waning days of the Ottoman
    Empire," Obama said in a written statement on Armenian Remembrance Day.

    "A full, frank, and just acknowledgement of the facts is in all of
    our interests. Moving forward with the future cannot be done without
    reckoning with the facts of the past," Obama said in a implicit
    appeal for vital American ally Turkey to move closer to recognizing
    the massacre.

    Turkey, a NATO member, fiercely disputes the genocide charge, and has
    warned that formal U.S. steps to use the term will hamper relations.

    Turkey's Ambassador to Washington Namik Tan sharply criticized a
    similar statement from Obama in 2011, taking to Twitter to denounce
    it as inaccurate, flawed, and one-sided.

    The issue is also a powerful one for Armenian Americans. "The Armenian
    Reporter" news site has repeatedly and forcefully condemned what it
    mockingly calls "amnesia" on the part of Obama and Secretary of State
    Hillary Clinton, who as senators co-sponsored a resolution calling
    for the use of the term "genocide" when discussing the tragedy.

    On Oct. 2, 2008, the paper published a letter from then-candidate
    Obama in which he trumpeted "my firmly held conviction that the
    Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a
    point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an
    overwhelming body of historical evidence."

    "The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats
    to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy," Obama wrote.

    "As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide."

    The chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, Ken
    Hachikian, issued a blistering denunciation of Obama's latest
    statement, saying it made "a stark lie" out of his 2008 campaign
    pledge and charged it "represents the very opposite of the principled
    and honest change he promised to Armenian Americans and to all the
    citizens of our nation."

    Armenian-American celebrity Kim Kardashian marked the event on her
    official Twitter feed, @kimkardashian. "Today lets all stand together
    & remember the 1.5 million people who were massacred in the Armenian
    Genocide. April 24th, 1915. #NEVERFORGET," she wrote.

    ANCA, which has a list detailing Obama's pre-White House support for
    labeling the massacre a "genocide," recently condemned Clinton for
    saying recently that whether to call it that "has always been viewed,
    and I think properly so, as a matter of historical debate."

    Over 20 countries have recognized the events of 1915 as genocide,
    and 42 U.S. states have done so as well, either by legislation or
    proclamation. Congressional resolutions aimed at doing the same at
    the national level have never become law. Successive presidents have
    objected on grounds that doing so risks angering Turkey.

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