Azernews.Az

YEREVAN – Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has admitted that his US counterpart Barack Obama turned down his request to use the term "genocide of Armenians" in his annual address on April 24, the anniversary of the alleged World War I-era killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.

"I have repeatedly stated and would like to reiterate that I have personally asked the US president in the past to use this term," Sargsyan told a news conference with his Swiss counterpart Micheline Calmy-Rey in Yerevan. "But wishes and reality are two different things. It is better when your desire matches reality. Let's hope that this will be the case this time. But if this doesn't happen, we should not have reason to be upset and must instead fight for that."

Obama repeatedly pledged to ensure an official U.S. recognition of the genocide when he ran for president. He has not delivered on that pledge, saying only that he stands by his past statements on the subject.

In his April 24 statement issued in 2009, Obama implied that he is not using the word "genocide" to avoid antagonizing Turkey and setting back its rapprochement with Armenia, which began shortly after Sargsyan took office in 2008.

Critics in Armenia and its diaspora seized upon this to claim that Sargsyan himself enabled Obama to backtrack on his campaign pledge by initiating the Turkish-Armenian "soccer diplomacy."

Sargsyan faced more such allegations in October 2010 following the circulation of an Internet video in which U.S. Vice President Joe Biden claimed that Sargsyan himself asked Washington not to "force" the issue of genocide recognition while Turkish-Armenian negotiations are in progress.

Both official Yerevan and the U.S. embassy in Yerevan denied Biden's claim.

According to historians, from 1915 to 1923, Armenians had begun an uprising. They took up arms against Turkey and assisted Russia, one of Turkey’s enemies in WWI. To counter these actions, the Ottoman Empire decided to resettle the Armenians. However, the latter claim that their predecessors were subjected to genocide in the process. Ankara rejects the allegations.

Calmy-Rey, whose country mediated in Turkish-Armenian negotiations along with the United States, urged Ankara and Yerevan to revive the normalization agreements that were signed in Zurich in October 2009.

"Formally, the Swiss mediation ended with the signing of the Zurich protocols," she said. "However, I wouldn't say that we have washed our hands and are indifferent to what is happening between Armenia and Turkey."

"Switzerland wants the process of protocol ratification to resume and we are ready to do everything that would encourage the parties," Calmy-Rey said.

Turkey has made clear that its parliament will not ratify the two protocols until there is decisive progress in international efforts to resolve the conflict over Armenia-occupied Nagorno Karabakh region.

The Armenian side rejects this precondition. Earlier this year, Sargsyan accused Ankara of "destroying" the normalization process and threatened to formally annul the protocols.