White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and one of President Barack Obama's top foreign policy advisors hosted Armenian American leaders at the White House to discuss the centennial.
McDonough and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes "discussed the significance of this occasion for honoring the 1.5 million lives extinguished during that horrific period," the National Security Council said in a statement.
Sticking to the White House's avoidance of the term, the statement said the United States would "use the occasion to urge a full, frank and just acknowledgement of the facts."
Armenian leaders who met with the administration officials said they were told Obama would not use the term. "His failure to use the term genocide represents a major blow for human rights advocates and sets the clock back on genocide prevention," said Armenian Assembly of America director Bryan Ardouny.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart and have long sought to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide.
Turkey has insisted it was not a "genocide" and has reacted angrily to the use of the word, most recently by Pope Francis. Turkey is a key US ally and a fellow member of NATO.
AFP
almanar.com.lb
22/4/15
--
-
Related:
1915 killings of Armenians "atrocity crimes" (Ban Ki-moon)
Turkey slams pope’s comments on Armenian genocide. (recalled its ambassador to the Vatican "for consultations")
Turkey slams European Parliament’s call to recognize ‘Armenian genocide’
-----
Armenians react to Erdogan’s statement for not recognizing the 1915 genocide
Obama terms events of 1915 "Meds Yeghern" (Great Calamity)
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU
Turkey's Erdogan doesn't expect Obama to call Armenian killings 'genocide'...
ReplyDelete(Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday he did not expect U.S. President Barack Obama to use the word "genocide" in reference to the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One.
Expectations had grown that Obama might fulfill a campaign pledge to describe the massacre of up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians as a genocide to mark the centennial of the killings, which began in 1915.
But news reports citing White House sources late on Tuesday said Obama would shun the term.
"I would not want Obama to use the word 'genocide', and I would not expect such a thing," Erdogan told a joint press conference with Iraqi President Fuad Masum.......reuters.com
22/4/15