Schiff presses Rice on Armenian Genocide recognition
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, is upset.
At an appropriations hearing before the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs today in Washington D.C., Schiff repeatedly asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice if she believed that the murder of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923 could be characterized as anything other than a genocide.
Schiff was reacting to a letter Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently sent to some of the chairs of committees on the Hill opposing recognition of the Armenian genocide.
Schiff writes:
I was disappointed that Secretary of State Rice was unwilling to acknowledge the plain facts of the Armenian Genocide. We cannot maintain the moral force we need to take action against the genocide going on in Darfur, if the Administration continues to equivocate about the genocide against the Armenians.
Here's Rice's response, via Schiff:
Congressman, I think that these historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians and what we've encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past and, in examining their past, to get over their past. But I will tell you, Congressman, I don't think that it helps that process of reconciliation for the United States to enter this debate at that level. I just don't think it's helpful.