WASHINGTON. - Armenian-American leaders and human rights advocates have expressed deep reservations about the nomination of Chuck Hagel to lead the defense department, The Washington Free Beacon informs.

The U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Hagel on Monday as a head of the Pentagon. He faces criticism for opposing a 2005 congressional resolution recognizing Turkey’s genocide of more than one million Armenians.

He claimed at that time to leave the issue open to historians, while Armenian-American leaders and genocide experts criticized these comments as insensitive and dangerous.

“On the eve of the Holocaust, Hitler mockingly asked, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ Not Chuck Hagel, apparently,” director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Rafael Medoff said. “Sweeping genocide under the rug in the name of political expediency, as Senator Hagel recommended with regard to Turkey and the Armenians, is not only wrong but dangerous, because the failure to acknowledge past genocides paves the way for future genocides.”

Other prominent human rights leaders, such as Walter Reich, called Hagel’s remarks as “shameful.”

Human rights scholar Thane Rosenbaum said Hagel’s opposition to U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide “betrays a shocking lack of moral leadership.”