ARMENIAN ACTIVISTS URGE OBAMA TO RECOGNIZE "GENOCIDE"

Agence France Presse
April 21 2009

YEREVAN, Armenia (AFP)–Dozens of Armenian youth activists marched
on the U.S. embassy in Yerevan Tuesday to call on President Barack
Obama to recognize the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians as
"genocide."

About 100 young activists with the opposition Heritage party
marched from central Yerevan to the embassy, carrying the flags of
21 countries and international organizations that have recognized
the genocide label.

"We are here to give a letter to U.S. President Obama with an appeal
to recognize the Armenian genocide. It is time for him to fulfill
the promise he made during his election campaign," said one of the
march’s organizers, David Sanasarian.

Armenia will Friday mark the 94th anniversary of the killings, which
have been at the root of a long diplomatic feud with neighboring
Turkey.

Obama pledged during his 2008 White House run that he would
recognize the 1915-17 massacres as genocide and has strongly backed
U.S. congressional resolutions to that effect.

But he avoided using the politically charged terminology during a
visit to Turkey earlier this month, instead calling for Armenia and
Turkey to build on recent efforts at reconciliation.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in orchestrated
killings during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey rejects the genocide label, saying that 300,000 Armenians
and at least an equal number of Turks were killed in civil strife in
1915-1917, when the Christian Armenians, backed by Russia, rose up
against the Ottomans.