A spokesman for Armenia’s president has denied the statement ascribed to United States Vice President Joe Biden in which the latter purportedly said that Serzh Sarkisian had asked him not to “force” the Armenian genocide issue while talks on Turkish-Armenian normalization were in progress.
On Wednesday, an anonymous source posted footage, apparently taken secretly, on an online video-sharing website, YouTube, which was later picked up by a number of media in Diaspora and Armenia proper, in which United States Vice President Joe Biden is shown talking to an Armenian activist.
In response to the Armenian activist’s question as to “what is the message that we should be giving to our community?” regarding the pledge of the Obama Administration to affirm the Armenian genocide, the person presented as Joe Biden says: “What you should be giving to your community is that we are not backing off. The Turks have to come to the realization of what the reality is. And what we got to do is, you know, this, the compromise that was going on and being worked at for a while… Tell them that it was the Armenian President that called me and said ‘Look, do not force this issue now, while we are in negotiations.’ We passed. That’s past right now. So anyway, reality has a way of intruding.”
The Wednesday statement issued by President Serzh Sarkisian’s press secretary Armen Arzumanian said: “The president of the Republic of Armenia has never called United States Vice President Joe Biden. It was at the latter’s initiative that two telephone conversations took place in 2009 and during those conversations the president of the Republic of Armenia did not, directly or indirectly, make the expression that is ascribed to him on the video.”
Arzumanian also said that the administration of the Armenian president officially gives its consent to publishing the record of the telephone conversation in question.
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