InternationalToo early to welcome Senator's move
Published: Tuesday August 10, 2010
Senator Barbara Boxer. ANCA
Los Angeles - The decision of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to delay the Bryza vote should not be welcomed by the Armenian-American community.
It should be no surprise that Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) urged the committee to delay the confirmation vote for Matthew Bryza, who has been nominated by President Obama to serve as United States Ambassador to Azerbaijan.
It must have been very clear to Sen. Boxer, and the other members of the committee, that the Armenian-American community strongly opposed the nomination of Mr. Bryza to the top American diplomatic post in Azerbaijan.
Despite her indubitable awareness of this, she opted to request a delay of the vote rather than placing a hold on his nomination, which she would have had the ability to do.
The evidence showing that Mr. Bryza would not be a fair arbiter of American diplomatic objectives in the region was plain and straightforward.
As the American Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, he consistently showed a pro-Azeri bias in his approach to the process, including his unfortunately prolonged silence on the destruction of the thousand year-old Armenian cemetery in Julfa, located in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan.
Additionally, contrary to his claim about leading separate professional and personal lives, he and his wife, Zeyno Baran, have regularly collaborated with regard to issues in the South Caucasus. If that weren't enough, one of the groomsmen at his wedding was the foreign minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov.
These facts were reported by the press and all the information was at Sen. Boxer's disposal. Curiously, though, she opted to delay the vote rather than place a hold on the nomination. In any other instance, with such an abundance of conflicts of interest, any honest Senator would reject such a nomination outright.
But it's an election year. And, of course, we shouldn't forget that Sen. Boxer is up for reelection in the fall and if she were to place a hold on an ambassadorial candidate, she would be going against an incumbent democratic president.
Thus, she likely estimated that it would be most prudent to delay the vote until the early fall, when, being closer to Election Day, she can better assess the influence the large Armenian-American vote will have in her reelection bid.
Senator Boxer's non-committal attitude toward this heavyweight constituency in California is reminiscent of President Barack Obama's rhetoric without action. Her unwillingness to make the right decision in light of a plethora of evidence and to instead toy with the Armenian-American community by offering an insufficient solution should be unacceptable to voters concerned with having a fair and balanced American foreign policy in the increasingly sensitive South Caucasus region.
The time has come for Armenian-Americans to expect more than just words and promises in exchange for their votes and money.
Elected officials have the power to take substantive action - so let them.
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