Biden poised to recognize Armenian Genocide: NYTimes, WSJ

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. President Joe Biden is poised to recognize the Armenian Genocide, both The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report, citing officials familiar with the matter.

Biden is expected to announce the symbolic designation on Saturday, April 24, the 106th anniversary of the beginning of a yearslong and systematic death march that the predecessors of modern Turkey started during World War I.

He would be the first sitting American president to do so, although Ronald Reagan made a glancing reference to the Armenian Genocide in a 1981 written statement about the Holocaust, and both the House and the Senate approved measures in 2019 to make its recognition a formal matter of U.S. foreign policy.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the administration’s discussions said Biden had decided to issue the declaration, and others across the government and in foreign embassies said it was widely expected, the New York Times said.

But the Wall Street Journal added that according to some officials, no final decisions or briefings have taken place, and Biden could opt to issue the symbolic statement without describing the killings as genocide, as have other presidents.

Biden’s presidential campaign said the month before the November election that he would “recognize the Armenian genocide and make universal human rights a top priority for his administration so that such a tragedy can never again occur.”