By empty (4/25/2006 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Hundreds of thousands of people commemorated on April 24 the 91st anniversary of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, silently converging on the monument to the genocide victims outside Yerevan, RFE/RL\'s Armenian Service reported. Many participants carried Armenian flags and banners denouncing Turkey\'s long-standing claims that the massacres occurred on a much smaller scale and refusal to recognize the atrocities as genocide. The daylong procession began with a prayer service in memory of the dead led by the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II, in the presence of President Robert Kocharian, members of his government, and other senior officials.
Hundreds of thousands of people commemorated on April 24 the 91st anniversary of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, silently converging on the monument to the genocide victims outside Yerevan, RFE/RL\'s Armenian Service reported. Many participants carried Armenian flags and banners denouncing Turkey\'s long-standing claims that the massacres occurred on a much smaller scale and refusal to recognize the atrocities as genocide. The daylong procession began with a prayer service in memory of the dead led by the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II, in the presence of President Robert Kocharian, members of his government, and other senior officials. A number of foreign diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador John Evans, also presented wreaths at the memorial. In comments marking the anniversary of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, President Kocharian pledged on April 24 to \"continue the struggle\" for international recognition of the genocide and to continue raising the issue with Turkey. Kocharian added that Turkey\'s unrepentant stand on the issue amounts to complicity in the genocide and noted that \"Ottoman Turkey and its legal successor bear full responsibility for this crime.\" (RFE/RL)