U.S. Senate confirms Marie Yovanovitch as Ambassador to Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net - The U.S. Senate confirmed nominee Marie L. Yovanovitch as next U.S. Ambassador to Armenia.



Confirmation came after a delay by lawmakers who were unhappy with Ms. Yavonovitch's refusal to use the term 'genocide' to describe the mass slaughter of Armenians at the hand of the Ottoman Empire, AP reports.



President Bush nominated Marie Yovanovitch to serve as America's next Ambassador to Armenia on March 28, 2008.



"The U.S. government - and certainly I - acknowledges and mourns the mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and forced deportations that devastated over one and a half million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire. The United States recognizes these events as one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the "Medz Yeghern" or Great Calamity, as many Armenians refer to it. That is why every April the President honors the victims and expresses American solidarity with the Armenian people on Remembrance Day," Ms. Yovanovitch said in her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 19, 2008.



The position has been unfilled since Ambassador John Evans was recalled two years ago by the Bush Administration for recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Another Ambassador-elect, Richard Hoagland, was withdrawn last year after Senator Menendez's hold.