12/10/09 - Met with Chairman of Armenian National Assembly Foreign Relations Committee, Armen Rustamyan.

04/22/09 - Remarks submitted for the Congressional Record - Madam Speaker, I rise to commemorate the suffering of millions of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 due to actions by the Ottoman Empire. In those eight years, approximately 2 million Armenians were deported from their traditional homeland. Of those, 1.5 million were senselessly killed and the remaining 500,000 were expelled from their homes. This genocide served as models for other horrific massacres and ethnic purges that sadly persisted throughout the 20th century.

There is broad agreement that indeed what took place was genocide . On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers England, France and Russia issued a joint statement charging the Sublime Porte of committing ``a crime against humanity.'' The U.S. showed firm opposition to the unfolding horrors. Secretary of State Lansing in 1915 authorized the Ambassador to the Sublime Porte to engage to ``stop Armenian persecution,'' and President Wilson set up relief funds for the victims and survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.

Genocide was also corroborated by German and British archives and records of diplomats who served in the Ottoman Empire at the time. The United States National Archives and Record Administration holds extensive documentation on the genocide , and the UN General Assembly in 1946 and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide recognized the Armenian Genocide as they type of crime the U.N. intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards. In 1975, a House Joint Resolution designated April 24 of that year as ``National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man'' in part to remember all victims of genocide , especially those of Armenian ancestry.

We welcome steps today by the governments of Turkey and Armenia -- as the official inheritors of these fateful policies of the Ottoman government -- to normalize relations and begin working through this history. Indeed, reconciliation of painful history is an important means of preventing future tragedies of this scope.

We believe this process will be strengthened if the President -- in his annual message commemorating the April 24, 1915 declaration by Allied Powers -- to accurately characterize the mindless massacre of Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud record of U.S. opposition to this persecution.

6/9/2009 - Janice O'Connell of the Gephardt Group Government Affairs, LLC emailed Maria Apud (Scheduler) regarding an invitation to social event at Embassy.

6/11/2009 - Janice O'Connell of the Gephardt Group Government Affairs, LLC emailed Maria Apud (Scheduler) regarding a decline invitation to social event.