Washington will soon know if the road map signed without preconditions or not

PanARMENIAN.Net - Apparently, there was a combination of factors resulted in not using by the U.S. President Barack Obama the word Genocide in his April 24 address, said the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Armenian Genocide Museum of America and member of the Trustees Board of the Armenian Assembly of America.



"With the benefit of time and conversations since April 24, it is now clear that that there were a combination of factors and different writers involved in the drafting process which led to the actual statement issued by President Obama," Van Krikorian told PanARMENIAN.Net



According to him, the biggest factor was the Administration's goal to normalize relations between Armenia and Turkey. In this regard, we will soon know whether the implicit rather than explicit use of the Armenian Genocide term, as well as the reference to that diplomatic process in the statement were risks worth taking.



"We obviously feel they did much more harm than good, and hindered the cause of genocide prevention globally, as well as Turkish-Armenian reconciliation," said Mr. Krikorian.



He emphasized, that in no more than six weeks, the Obama Administration will need to reevaluate as we discover if the roadmap is indeed, as reported, without preconditions and is subsequently signed by both parties.



According to Van Krikorian, another factor not to be discounted is that there are officials within US Administration and influential lobbyists who disagree with the President's record and the policy on explicit use of the Armenian Genocide term. "Wittingly or unwittingly, they are part of the genocide denial campaign which has been waged for decades-some. Some of them are paid and some act with the expectation of being paid in the future," he said.



According to him, as usual, the U.S. political context and the impact of Turkish threats also played a role, especially in the wake of the U.S. agenda with Turkey.



"At the same time, it seems that a pattern is developing where new administrations try to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Even though there is not supposed to be any preconditions or linkage between Armenian-Turkish reconciliation and settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict, there are parallel tracks of negotiations. Although despite the statements of Barack Obama, the US administration did not intend to harm Turkish civil society efforts to come to terms with their history," Mr. Krikorian concluded.