The measure cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a 27-21 vote on Oct. 10, but support in the house has since dwindled. In the weeks following the vote, 14 co-sponsors withdrew their sponsorship amid warnings from President Bush’s administration that passage of the bill would threaten crucial U.S. military relations with Turkey.
In an unprecedented show of support for a genocide resolution, 235 House members were at one time this year listed as co-sponsors. A total of 24 former co-sponsors have withdrawn, including those who dropped out after the committee vote, leaving 211 co-sponsors as of Oct. 26.
“I don’t have the level of confidence that I would need to have recommended the speaker to take it up right now,” Schiff said. “I think it’s too close.”
The House approved similar genocide resolutions in 1975 and 1984, but those measures failed to pass the Senate. The issue returned to the House in 2000 and 2005, passing committee both times but falling mercy to former Speaker Dennis Hastert who failed to bring those bills to the floor for a final vote.
This year’s resolution has faltered in a different context. Where the 2000 and 2005 bills reportedly had clear majority support in the House, a non-supportive Speaker blocked the measures by not calling them for a vote.
In 2007, the resolution is backed by the speaker, yet majority support for the measure appears tenuous.
“In this case, we have very close to the majority and it’s not very clear whether it’s going to pass by a few votes or fail by a few votes,” said Harut Sassounian, publisher of the Glendale-based California Courier and president of the United Armenian Fund.
Taking the bill to the floor poses a potentially perilous political risk, he said.
“Neither the speaker nor the Armenian community can take a chance of possibly failing, which will then be magnified a million times by Turkish deniers,” Sassounian said.
If the resolution were to fail in the House, opponents, including Turkey, would spin the decision as affirmation by Congress that the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century was not genocide, he said.
Calls and an e-mail to the Turkish Embassy press office with request for comment were not returned.
Though a postponement of a vote has no doubt deflated supporters’ hopes, backers of the resolution appear to side with the decision.
“It is a setback but we don’t consider it a defeat,” said Elen Asatryan, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, Glendale chapter. “It’s going to go when it can be won.”
