WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — US National Security Advisor Susan Rice urged Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in meetings held in Washington, DC on Tuesday to improve relations with Armenia, the National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said.
“Ambassador Rice encouraged the Minister to take concrete steps to improve relations with Armenia,” Meehan stated on Tuesday.
Cavusoglu is in the United States days before the April 24 centennial of the massacre and forced removal of more than a million ethnic Armenians in Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Armenia and several other countries recognize the act as genocide.
The Turkish government argues hundreds of thousands of Muslims were also killed, and added that the death of Armenians was not systematic and occurred during the political, economic and military upheaval of World War I.
After meeting with members of the American-Armenian community on Tuesday, senior White House officials said the President would not call the deaths genocide at a commemoration on Friday.
Turkey and Armenia do not have official relations and the border between the two countries has been closed for nearly two decades.
Turkey, an important NATO partner for the United States, has lobbied hard to prevent the United States from calling the events of World War I genocide and has threatened to curb cooperation should the United States decides otherwise.
