Joe Biden
Elected president of the United States in 2021, Joe Biden is the first US president since Ronald Reagan to use the tern genocide in reference to the Armenian Genocide during office, though virtually all presidents since had promised to use the term during their election campaigns.
2021 Presidential statement on Armenian Genocide day
Statement by President Joe Biden on Armenian Remembrance Day
APRIL 24, 2021
Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.
Of those who survived, most were forced to find new homes and new lives around the world, including in the United States. With strength and resilience, the Armenian people survived and rebuilt their community. Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history that brought so many of their ancestors to our shores. We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.
Today, as we mourn what was lost, let us also turn our eyes to the future—toward the world that we wish to build for our children. A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security. Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world. And let us pursue healing and reconciliation for all the people of the world.
The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.
U.S. Embassy Clarifies Biden YouTube Comment
30.10.2010
The U.S. Embassy in Armenia has disseminated a statement clarifying a recent YouTube video in which Vice President Joe Biden alleges that the Armenian president asked Washington not to “force” the issue of Armenian genocide while Turkish-Armenian negotiations were in progress.
The video, posted on YouTube on October 26 and picked up by Armenian media shows Biden speaking to an Armenian-American community activist, who asks the U.S. official for a message from the administration of President Barack Obama on his campaign pledge to recognize the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1915-19 as genocide. Biden responds: “…Tell [the Armenian-American community] that it was the Armenian president that called me and said, ‘Look, do not force this issue now, while we’re in negotiations [with Turkey on reconciliation].”
In its statement issued late on Friday, the U.S. Embassy said Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian “did not raise the issue of the content of President Obama’s statement for Armenian Remembrance Day or seek a delay in consideration of House Resolution 252 [calling for the affirmation of the Armenian genocide].”
“Instead, the discussions between Vice President Biden and President Sarkisian that were recently referenced by the Vice President were about the need to take immediate steps to improve Armenian-Turkish relations. The two leaders agreed that there should be no preconditions to normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey.”
The U.S. Embassy in Armenia said Biden and Sarkisian spoke twice in April 2009.
“In these calls, the Vice President told President Sarkisian the United States believes that the normalization of relations with Turkey and the opening of borders would provide a path to a better future for Armenia and expressed the support of the United States for his leadership.
“The Vice President expressed the Obama Administration’s support for a Swiss proposal for a joint Armenia-Turkish statement on progress made toward normalizing relations.”
Sarkisian’s press secretary, Armen Arzumanian, issued a statement on October 27 saying that Sarkisian “has never called United States Vice President Joe Biden. It was at [Biden’s] initiative that two telephone conversations took place in 2009 and during those conversations the [Armenian] president did not, directly or indirectly, make the expression that is ascribed to him on the video.”
Arzumanian added that Sarkisian’s administration was officially giving its consent to publishing the records of the telephone conversations between Biden and Sarkisian.