The American Hellenic Institute (AHI) released a statement demanding that President Barack Obama recall Ambassador James Jeffrey, accusing the envoy of making “unacceptable, disappointing and damaging” remarks that “undermine the administration’s position on Cyprus.”
AHI complained that Jeffrey, in a recent newspaper interview, justified Turkey’s 1974 military intervention into the Turkish-Cypriot region in northern Cyprus in response to a coup engineered by the military junta ruling Greece at the time.
At the hearing, Democrat Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey recounted Jeffrey’s remarks that “[Turkey] has security concerns in Cyprus and in northern Iraq,” and remarked that Jeffrey “could not be supporting this reasoning which is introduced for keeping Turkish troops in Cyprus.” Menendez then asked whether asked whether Jeffrey’s remarks were “a slip of [the] tongue.”
In response, Clinton first stated that her department has been “heartened by some of the intense consultations … between the Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leadership,” noting however that “there is a long way to go.”
“And I think that, I can’t speak for our ambassador, but I assume that he was stating the opinion of the Turkish government. That is something that we do not ascribe to, because we want to see the entire Cyprus situation resolved, but we certainly understand that is the stated position of the Turkish government, not the American government,” she added.
