Amoral crop of the moral victory

23/10/2007 Karen KOCHARYAN

“Free cheese lies only in the trap”
People’s saying

Last week the US House on Foreign Relations approved the resolution 106, which relates to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It’s not excluded that by the lucky hand of the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi the document is included in the full session of the House on December 1. Let me remind you that as of the last week the majority of the House members (225 out of 435) supported the resolution. Now let’s go back to Armenia and try to discuss the issue in the non-emotional and pragmatic angle. What will the adoption of the resolution give to us? RA government thinks that this is the victory of our country and that the Armenian lobby reached its goal and finally we almost reached victory. Let’s start from the point that I am not a “reckless” person and don’t like to bet but in this case I am ready to bet that the Americans will never adopt the resolution. And the US House on Foreign Affairs adopted this resolution not for the “pretty eyes” of the Armenians and not especially for the sake of justice. It was just necessary for the American government to put pressure on Turkey at this stage. If the American democrats were so concerned about the Armenian Genocide recognition they could have done it 7-8 years ago when their President was democrat Bill Clinton, who by the way has promised the Armenian community to recognize the Genocide if he had gotten elected. Therefore the adoption of this resolution first of all comes from the interests of the US government. Of course, I cannot insist that whatever comes from the interests of the US is against Armenian interests. But in this case it is against the interests of the Armenian citizens. Same would be if the NA of Armenia had adopted a bill to officially recognize the independence of Karabagh proposed by Raffi Hovhannissian, which by the way was immediately echoed by Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan. Of course it is the dream of any Armenian to see Karabagh as an independent state and the Armenian Genocide recognized by all the key states. But this is a very serious initiative and this case if we decide to take a risk like that we have to be sure that we will be the winners of the “game”. It’s not me, who should warn you of this. But now let’s just try to understand what happened when the US House on Foreign Affairs approved the Armenian Genocide Resolution 106. Turkey threatened the US. Everybody understands that the US in the economic and political aspect doesn’t care about these threats. Because the US citizens working in Turkey will never get deported or arrested; Turkey can’t ever put embargo on the US cargo and finally Matthew Bryza’s wife will never divorce him. Same happened with the relations with France. In our case the prices of the Turkish goods will shift up in Armenia. And all this will be done with the expectation that in November the US House will deny the resolution. Because yesterday the DPA news agency by citing the publication of the New York Times, informed that during one day about 100 congressmen have taken away their signatures. The reason for that is that the US has a fear that the adoption of the resolution will hinder the Turkish-US relations. Representative of Tennessee State, democrat Lincoln Davis, who till now had been supporting this resolution, has stated that it’s not worth losing an ally in the Middle East. Even if the whole House adopts this resolution after this President Bush will never do so and he has stated this many times before. And so this gives us grounds to presume that all this noise is made to pressure on Turkey and also threaten about their plans to establish a state named Kurdistan. In this case we have to warn our statesmen to be more careful and remind tem of their parents’ warnings – “Don’t ever take the candies offered by strange uncles”.