Did Serzh Sargsyan ask Biden to suspend the Genocide recognition issue?

In his interview to Factor TV, political scientist Gurgen Simonyan referred to the secretly recorded conversation between US Vice President Joe Biden and one of the Armenian lobbyists back in 2010.

According to the political scientist, Biden informed the lobbyist that the third president of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, asked the US administration to suspend the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in order not to harm the Armenian-Turkish normalization process that had started in 2008.

“Biden was stopped in the corridor by one of the lobbyists and… when asked why the recognition of the Genocide by the USA is not on the agenda, [Biden] says because the President of Armenia calls and tells us to put the issue on hold. This is history, and with such a fact you will simply disrupt the peaceful negotiation process,” said the political scientist.

Simonyan also noted that “often extremely important, pro-Armenian decisions were not implemented because of the hesitant Armenian officials, and this is not only Serzh Sargsyan’s problem.”

What does Biden say in the video?

The video of the conversation between Biden and the Armenian young man was published on October 27, 2010, on the YouTube channel called marty8465. By the way, this is the only video uploaded to that channel.

The young Armenian who approached Biden tells him that he is very upset that the issue of recognizing the Genocide is not on the agenda of the US administration, and that he wants to know what message he should convey to the Armenian community.

In response, Biden says: “What you should be giving to your community is that we are not backing off. Turks have to come to the realization of what the reality is. Tell them (the Armenian community – Ed.) that it was the Armenian president that called me and said: “Look, do not force this issue now while we are negotiating.” We passed. That’s passed right now. So anyway, reality has a way of intruding.”

President Sargsyan’s office responded to the video published by an anonymous source on the same day, October 27, 2010. Sargsyan’s press secretary at the time, Armen Arzumanyan, claimed that the third president never called US Vice President Joe Biden.

“On the initiative of the latter, two telephone conversations took place in 2009, during which the President of the Republic of Armenia did not directly or indirectly make the statement attributed to him in the video,” Arzumanyan said, suggesting that the White House publish the transcripts and recordings of all official telephone conversations of Vice President Biden at their disposal.

However, there was no response from the White House, and despite the official consent of Sargsyan’s office, no transcript or recording of any conversation between Biden and Sargsyan was published.

Thus, Biden’s claims made during the secret video recording were denied by the office of the third president. Later, no information substantiating those claims was published.

Therefore, the claims about the request attributed to Sargsyan to suspend the recognition of the Genocide remain unconfirmed, although according to the cited video, the current US President Joe Biden did make such claims.

Nane Manasyan