Obama avoids saying "genocide" when discussing massacre of Armenians

On the day Armenia has chosen to mark the mass killing of its people by Ottoman Turks at the end of World War I, U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged "one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century," but didn't say the term "genocide." The careful choice of words was no accident -- Turkey is overly sensitive about what others think of it, and the United States is trying to keep Ankara engaged in the treacherous world of Middle East peacemaking, where it has been an asset . "On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began," Obama said in a statement issued Saturday by the White House, according to the Reuters international news service. "In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire." The remarks took on even more significance in light of Thursday's collapse of a deal to have Turkey and Armenia establish diplomatic relations and open their shared border for the first time. The deal, designed to ease tensions in the strategic south Caucasus region, apparently hung up over Turkey's demand that Armenia work out its differences with nearby Azerbaijan as a condition of the agreement, Reuters said. The region has taken on new strategic importance since the breakup of the Soviet Union because it is crossed by new pipelines shipping energy to Europe. Seen in this context, Obama's remarks were conciliatory towards Turkey, even if historically inaccurate. During his campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2008, Obama used the word "genocide" when describing the killings by the Ottoman Turks. Maybe diplomatic outreach really isn't as easy as he likes to describe it. Turkey, as we know, was angry and withdrew its ambassador to Washington in March after the House of Representative passed a nonbinding resolution that called the killings "genocide." The full body has not yet voted on the resolution and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Obama administration opposes it, Reuters said.

Elections in Sudan don't live up to Western standards

The United States and other Western nations didn't wait until the votes were completely counted in Sudan to begin questioning the validity of the results of the first multiparty election in the East African nation in 24 years. The U.S. State Department said Monday that the weekend balloting was "not a free and fair election," given wide reports of alleged fraud and boycotts by various groups. "It did not, broadly speaking, meet international standards," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington, according to the Reuters international news service. Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and his National Congress Party are expected to easily win re-election and continue to dominate politics, at least in the northern portion of the insurgency-torn oil-producing nation still under the control of the government in Khartoum. But given that the election occurred at all, even flawed, was seen as a positive development by the West. The balloting fulfilled another portion of the 2005 peace deal that interrupted a 22-year civil war between Sudan's Muslim-dominated north and Christian and Animist groups in the south led by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army. The third and, perhaps, most important condition of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is a vote on whether to permanently separate the northern and southern regions of Sudan by 2011, Reuters said. "I think we recognize that the election is a very important step" in carrying out the 2005 peace deal, Crowley said. "The United States will continue to work with the government in the north, the government in the south, as we move forward with ... the vitally important referenda that'll happen in January of next year." Initial polls indicate Bashir's party would receive as much as 90 percent of the vote in northern Sudan, Reuters said. In a separate statement, delegations from the United States, Britain and Norway -- guarantors of the peace deal, said the election suffered from poor preparation and other irregularities and called on the Khartoum government to fix these problems before the next round of voting. "We note initial assessments of the electoral process from independent observers, including the judgment that the elections failed to meet international standards," the three countries said in a statement. "We are reassured that voting passed reasonably peacefully, reportedly with significant participation, but share their serious concerns about weak logistical and technical preparations and reported irregularities in many parts of Sudan. Observers from the European Union and the Carter Center also said the elections did not meet international standards. Bashir still faces genocide charges filed last year by the International Criminal Court in The Hague over hundreds of thousands of killings in the Darfur region of eastern Sudan, where millions were displaced by conflict between the Khartoum government and ethnic rebel groups that was not related to the 22-year war between north and south.

Voters in divided Sudan go to polls despite continuing controversy

Word from Sudan is that voters are jamming polling places in the country's first multiparty election in 24 years in the face of an unsettled political situation, calls for boycotts and allegations of fraud. The landmark election implements another requirement of a 2005 agreement that ended, at least temporarily, a decades-long civil war but left the oil-rich country divided between the government-controlled Muslim north and the Christian- and Animist-controlled south. The election is a prelude to the unification vote planned for 2011, according to Cable News Network (CNN). Voting continues through Tuesday. Reports of irregularities poured in from all over the country, despite the presence of 750 international monitors, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and 18,000 Sudanese monitors, CNN said. But some problems were expected "in a country that hasn't had an election in 23 years or so," Carter said. "Most of the problems I saw this morning were logistical in nature and have already been corrected, at least around Khartoum," he said. But he said some problems were expected "in a country that hasn't had an election in 23 years or so." Many reports of irregularities were coming from the south, the stronghold of the opposition Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement. In fact, complaints about fraud by the ruling National Congress Party caused the withdrawal of its candidate from the presidential race against President Omar al-Bashir, who took power in a 1989 military coup and implemented Islamic law, CNN said. In Juba, Southern Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, called the balloting a significant milestone for the country and said he had voted for the first time in his life. SPLM spokesman Yein Matthew told CNN that it was documenting incidents in the region and would present a list of them on Monday. "There are so many, and we are still tracking them down," Matthew said. More than 2 million people died in the civil war, not including the conflict in the western Sudan region of Darfur. That conflict, which received broad international media coverage, was between the government militias and ethnic rebels and resulted in genocide charges being filed against al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, CNN said. Al-Bashir denies the charges.

Turkey acts like victim of House committee's genocide vote

Turkey reacted furiously but predictably Thursday after the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians after World War I in what is now Turkey. As many as 1.5 million Armenians died in the chaos of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, which was defeated in the war along with its ally, Germany. But Turkey vehemently refuses to acknowledge the killings as genocide, contending instead that the slayings did not qualify as a genocide because they were not planned. "We condemn this bill that denounces the Turkish nation of a crime that it has not committed," Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said from Ankara, the capital, according to the New York Times. Turkey also recalled its new U.S. ambassador, Namik Tan, for consultations, the Times said. The nonbinding resolution passed the Foreign Affairs Committee on a 23-22 vote, even closer than a 2007 vote that was quickly squashed by the Bush administration out of concern for evolving diplomatic relations with Turkey. The Obama administration also tried, apparently too late, to prevent the committee from approving the resolution, the Times said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Rep. Howard Berman (D-California), the committee chairman, that a vote could damage U.S.-sponsored efforts aimed at reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia, its neighbor. Those efforts were successful in producing still-pending agreements between the two countries for closer relations, open borders and to set up a commission to examine the historical record. "We've pressed hard to see the progress that we've seen to date, and we certainly do not want to see that jeopardized," said Philip Crowley, a State Department spokesman. Crowley said Obama discussed normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia on Wednesday with Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, the Times said.

Agreement in Sudan could resolve one of world's most intractable conflicts

Reports from Sudan say the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and the government in
Khartoum have agreed to a ceasefire that could help end a seven-year insurgency that has left hundreds of thousands dead in the east African nation. The deal was reached Tuesday at a four-way summit in Qatar attended by JEM representatives and the leaders of Sudan, Qatar and Eritrea, according to Cable News Network (CNN). A permanent ceasefire is expected to be signed by March 15, Tahir al-Fati, chairman of the rebel movement's legislative assembly, told CNN. Qatar has been mediating negotiations to resolve the conflict, which began with the start of the insurgency in 2003, CNN said. Sudan's government launched a brutal counterinsurgency that killed thousands and displaced as many as 2.7 million residents. The brutality of the insurgency, aided by Arab militias, resulted in the International Criminal Court filing genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, CNN said. Those charges are still pending. The United Nations has reported that more than 300,000 people were killed in the conflict as a result of the fighting, disease and malnutrition, CNN said. Other participants at the summit were Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Kuwait; Idris Deby, the president of Chad, and Assais Afwerki, Eritrea's president.

Diplomatic surprise -- Armenia and Turkey begin to mend long-festering conflict

Do miracles still happen? In a development that should give hope to societies all over the world caught up in seemingly intractable conflicts, Armenia and Turkey seem about to establish diplomatic relations for the first time since World War I. The countries have been negotiating since April with the help of mediators from Switzerland and the United States, according to the Reuters international news service. "The political consultations will be completed within six weeks, following which the two Protocols will be signed and submitted to the respective Parliaments for the ratification on each side," the foreign ministries of both countries said in a joint statement. "Both sides will make their best efforts for the timely progression of the ratification in line with their constitutional and legal procedures." Turkey and Armenia have been enemies since the mass killings and expulsions of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, and Turkey still bitterly disputes characterization of the mass killings as genocide, even though that is exactly what it was. Armenians were legally discriminated against for decades in what became modern Turkey before and after the mass killings, and what was left of Armenia's historic territory joined the Soviet Union or it would probably have been absorbed by Turkey, too. The agreement, which includes a commission to examine the countries' troubled past, was applauded by the U.S. State Department. "We urge Armenia and Turkey to proceed expeditiously," spokesman Ian Kelly said in a statement, according to Reuters. "We remain ready to work closely with both governments in support of normalization, a historic process that will contribute to peace, security and stability throughout the region." The agreement was timed as a precursor to a planned visit to Turkey by Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan in October, when he is scheduled to attend a World Cup soccer match between the two countries. Turkey has a considerable incentive for resolving its differences with Armenia -- Ankara wants to improve its international image to better its chances of joining the European Union. But the agreement has risks, particularly in expected outrage from nearby Azerbaijan, where an internal conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and Armenia's involvement in it, caused Turkey to close its border with Armenia in 1993. That was just two years after Armenia became an independent country with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Azerbaijan has strategic important to the West because of its natural gas reserves, yet the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved, 15 years after Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces signed a tense ceasefire, Reuters said.

Happy talk by former presidents obscures deep political divide

Nice to see former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton getting along so well. The stuck up for each other and even joked around Friday at a political forum in Toronto when they spoke before a crowd of 6,000, according to the Associated Press. Neither criticized the other in their first appearance together, the AP said. Bush, who left office in January after eight controversial years as president, said he didn't like being criticized by previous administration officials and that Clinton never did that. Bush said there were "plenty of critics in America," the AP said. And Clinton, who was president from 1993-2001, did not even mention recent well-publicized comments by Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been highly critical of the new administration of Barak Obama. Bush even called Clinton his "brother" while joking about how much time his father, former President George H.W. Bush, spends with his immediate predecessor. Clinton and the elder Bush led international fundraising efforts after the southeast Asian tsunami and after hurricanes Katrina and Ike. The two former presidents made speeches before answering questions from the audience, the AP said. Clinton said he regretting not sending soldiers to Africa to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and Bush defended his administration's conduct of the Iraq war. "I don't buy the premise that our attention was diverted," Bush said, after Clinton said Bush should have given U.N. inspectors more time to look for weapons of mass destruction and instead concentrated more on Aghanistan, where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is still thought to be hiding. Clinton praised Bush for his contributions to efforts to battle the AIDS virus in Africa and for appointing a racially and ethnically diverse Cabinet. Bush said Clinton would not have been able to mobilize enough troops in time to stop the Rwanda bloodbath, in which Hutu militias killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in three months. The event was moderated Frank McKenna, a former Canadian ambassador to the United States.