WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday that a presidential delegation will attend a centennial commemoration of the 1915 events in Armenia later this week.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will be joined Friday by Washington’s envoy to Yerevan Richard Mills and House Reps. Jackie Speier, Frank Pallone, Anna Eshoo and Dave Trott, according to the White House.
The announcement follows a meeting earlier on Tuesday between Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and Armenian-American leaders.
“They discussed the significance of this occasion for honoring the 1.5 million lives extinguished during that horrific period and welcomed the principled advocacy of the Armenian-American community on behalf of justice,” National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement.
“They pledged that the United States will use the occasion to urge a full, frank, and just acknowledgement of the facts that we believe is in the interest of all parties,” she added.
According to U.S. media, Rhodes and McDonough told Armenian-American leaders that Obama would not recognize the Armenian events as "genocide", according to a statement by the Armenian National Committee of America.
