Senior White House officials told Armenian American leaders that President Barack Obamawould avoid using the term genocide in his April 24th statement, marking the centennial of 1915 incidents, Daily Sabah reported.
White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes today hosted leaders from the Armenian Assembly of America and the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and said that President Obama had decided not to use the term “genocide” in his statement, according to a press release by ANCA.
A senior administration official told Daily Sabah that Obama would describe the incidents as “Meds Yeghern”, an Armenian term which means “great calamity.” He avoided the g-word in his previous statements for the last a few years when commemorating the killings of Armenians in 1915.
The official said that they know and respect that there were some who were hoping to hear different language this year. “We understand their perspective, even as we believe that the approach we have taken in previous years remains the right one—both for acknowledging the past, and for our ability to work with regional partners to save lives in the present,” the official added.
/Apa/
