A leading American-Armenian advocacy group this week encouraged the United States president-elect to make good on his promise to affirm the Armenian Genocide.

Arpi Vartanian, the country director for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh offices of the Armenian Assembly of America (www.aaainc.org), said at a press conference in Yerevan Thursday that the organization cherishes strong hopes that Barack Obama will live up to his pre-election commitment to the influential Armenian community in the US to recognize the mass killings and deportations of Armenians organized and perpetrated by Turkish authorities in 1915-1923 as genocide.

“Of course one can’t exclude the promises will not be kept, but because Obama has stated his commitment for more than once,” his words seem to be “trustworthy”, said Vartanian.

However, Vartanian stated, the organization, along with other Armenian organizations, “will need to keep working to have the promises [made by the candidate] kept.”

“American Armenians have been very active in the campaign and supportive of Obama. They have worked with the voters all over the country to convince them to go and take part in the voting,” Vartanian told the journalists.

“I think the atmosphere in the States has changed, as it has changed in the world. More attention is paid now to the genocides, and it does not refer only to the Armenian Genocide.”

To the question on Turkey’s anti-recognition campaign gaining new, stronger momentum the Assembly’s country director responded:

“They (US authorities) do not work in a vacuum, and know Turkey’s position. I hope they will be the master of their word. And then, let me add, Turkey has not been a good friend of the United States that much and acts in line with its own interests.”

The recognition, Vartanian concluded, is necessity for the American people themselves, because it will mean, first and foremost, reinstatement of their own country’s history:

“Archives in America are full of facts. The US does not deny the fact. It has not recognized it, because it has not been politically expedient. The American people will gain, when the United States finally accepts and affirms its history.”