Vice President J.D. Vance visits the Armenian genocide memorial in Yerevan

Vice President J.D. Vance visited a memorial on Tuesday to the estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century, a solemn stop during his peace-making visit to the region.

Mr. Vance and second lady Usha Vance walked the grounds of the memorial, known as Tsitsernakaberd, and followed an Armenian honor guard as it placed a ceremonial wreath at the site.

The couple each carried a bouquet of red roses into the memorial and placed them near its eternal flame.

“Memory eternal,” Mr. Vance wrote above his signature in the guest book.

The memorial, overlooking Yerevan, memorializes the systematic elimination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire around the World War I period. Intellectuals were arrested and massacred, families were marched off into the Syrian desert, and some women and children were forced to convert to Islam.

The killings are considered a somber template for later genocides in the 20th century, and a source of tensions between nations and Turkey, which rejects the genocide label.

Underscoring the diplomatic sensitivity of the topic, the vice president’s office posted, then deleted, a tweet with a photograph of Mr. Vance at the genocide memorial. The vice president’s office said the picture had been posted in error by a staff member who is not part of the traveling delegation.

“This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the vice president’s activities. For the vice president’s views on the substance of the question, I refer you to the comments he made earlier on the tarmac in response to the pool’s question,” a Vance spokesperson said.

Mr. Vance had explained his visit earlier in the day.

“When we talked to the Armenians, they said, ‘This is a very important site for us,’ and obviously, I’m the first vice president to ever visit Armenia. They asked us to visit the site,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “It’s a very terrible thing that happened little over 100 years ago, and something that was just very, very important to them culturally.

“I wanted to go and pay a visit and pay my respects,” the vice president said.

Edita Gzoyan, director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) in Yerevan, accompanied the Vances during their tour.

The vice president traveled to Armenia, a landlocked country in the Caucasus region of western Asia, to try to finalize a peace deal with its neighbor, Azerbaijan, that was brokered in part by President Trump last year.

Both nations are working to ratify the deal, following initial approval at the White House last summer.

“I feel very good about where we are,” Mr. Vance said. “I think the president struck a great peace deal, and I think the administration is really making it stick.”

The deal affirms each nation’s sovereignty over contested lands and calls for the creation of a major transit route that connects Azerbaijan to its autonomous enclave, Nakhchivan. The route must traverse a strip of Armenian territory.

The route will offer a trade corridor that bypasses Russia and Iran.

Mr. Vance is the first sitting president or vice president to visit Armenia. He is heading to Azerbaijan on Tuesday to meet with officials on the other side of the deal.

During a meeting, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev thanked the Trump administration for its “contribution to peace in the Caucasus.” 

“We are learning to live in peace,” Mr. Aliyev said.

Mr. Vance said the two countries were signing a strategic partnership agreement to “make it very clear that the United States-Azerbaijan relationship is one that will stick.”