“While we appreciate the President George Bush’s willingness to join with Armenians around the world, we remain deeply troubled by his continued use of evasive and euphemistic terminology to obscure the moral, historical, and legal meaning of Turkey’s genocide against the Armenian people,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), the Yerkir newspaper reported. “This statement, sadly, once again, represents a form of complicity in the Turkish government’s shameful campaign to deny a crime against humanity,” he added. The ANCA has also expressed concern that the Administration’s refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide reflects a broader unwillingness to confront genocide – as evidenced by the White House’s failure to take decisive steps to bring an end to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. The ANCA is working with a broad coalition of organizations to pressure the Administration to respond in a timely and meaningful way to the worsening crisis in Darfur. “If we are to end the cycle of genocide, we must, as a nation, generate the resolve to forcefully intervene to stop genocide when it takes place, to unequivocally reject its denial, to hold the guilty accountable, and to secure for the victims the justice they deserve,” added Hamparian. It should be noted that in February of 2000, then presidential candidate George W. Bush, campaigning for votes among Armenian voters in the Michigan Republican primary, pledged to properly characterize the genocidal campaign against the Armenian people. However, in his statements as President, he has consistently avoided any clear reference to the Armenian Genocide, and his Administration has consistently opposed legislation marking this crime against humanity.
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