Samantha Power gets a top White House job, backs Armenian claims

Officials familiar with the decision told the Associated Press that Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council.

 

Power has resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" and made some pro-Israel activists unhappy with her past criticism of Israel.Â

 

Her new post will require close contact and potential travel with the Secretary of State Clinton.

 

Power is an expert on human rights and foreign policy. She is currently a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

 

She also known as a fierce supporter of the Armenian claims regarding the 1915 incidents.

 

The issue of 1915 incidents is highly sensitive for Turkey as well as Armenia. Around 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks, died in civil strife that emerged when Armenians took up arms, backed by Russia, for independence in eastern Anatolia.

 

However Armenia, with the backing of the diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915. The issue remains unsolved as Armenia drags its feet in accepting Turkey's proposal of forming a commission to investigate the claims.

 

MOST PRO-ARMENIA ADMINISTRATION

The new US administration became the most pro-Armenian claims administration in the history with the appointment of Power, Hurriyet daily reported on Saturday.

 

Obama had pledged to recognize the Armenian claims regarding the 1915 incidents during the election campaign. Vice President Joseph Biden, Clinton and the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi also support Armenian claims.

 

Also the new director of CIA, Leon Panetta, also backs the Armenian claims on this highly controversial issue on which the historians and experts are divided.

 

Hurriyet said it is worried that Obama will use the term "genocide" in his statement on April 24 or a new legislation will be pushed to the Congress to recognize the Armenian claims, such moves likely to spark crisis between Ankara and Washington.