RFE/RL -- The United States has again criticized the Armenian authorities’ human rights record, saying that they have continued to stifle dissent, manipulate elections, tolerate police brutality and restrict judicial independence over the past year.

“Authorities restricted the right of citizens to freely change their government in [the May 2009] mayoral elections in Yerevan,” the U.S. State Department said late Thursday in an annual report scrutinizing human rights practices around the world.

“During the year authorities subjected citizens, particularly those considered by the government to be political opponents, to arbitrary arrest, detention, and imprisonment for their political activities; lengthy pretrial detention also continued to be a problem,” concludes the report.

“Authorities continued to use harassment and intrusive application of bureaucratic measures to intimidate and retaliate against political opponents. Authorities used force to disperse political demonstrations and constrain citizens seeking to publicize them. Police beat pretrial detainees and failed to provide due process in some cases.”

Huffington Post, by Stephen Zunes -- The Obama administration, citing its relations with Turkey, has pledged to block the passage in the full House of Representatives of a resolution passed this past Thursday by the Foreign Relations Committee acknowledging the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire of a 1.5 million Armenians. Even though the Obama administration previously refused to acknowledge and even worked to suppress well-documented evidence of recent war crimes by Israel, another key Middle Eastern ally, few believed that the administration would go as far as to effectively deny genocide.

Following the committee vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that “We are against this decision,” and pledged that the administration would "work very hard" to prevent the bill from coming to the floor. Despite widespread support for the resolution by House Democrats, she expressed confidence that the administration would find a means of blocking the resolution, saying, “Now we believe that the U.S. Congress will not take any decision on this subject."

Ibon Villelabeitia, Reuters -- Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden on Thursday and cancelled an upcoming summit between the countries after the Swedish parliament branded the World War One killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces genocide.

The move comes only a week after Ankara called home its ambassador to the United States because a U.S. congressional committee approved a similar resolution.

European Union member Sweden has been one of the strongest supporters of Ankara's bid to join the bloc, while the United States is generally considered a strong western ally of the NATO-member Turkey.

RFE/RL -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday invited President Serzh Sarkisian to visit Washington next month, in a telephone conversation that appears to have centered on Armenia’s stalled rapprochement with Turkey.

Sarkisian’s office said Clinton phoned the Armenian leader to invite him to an international summit on nuclear energy security that will take place in Washington in mid-April. It said she expressed hope that the two sides will use the occasion to “continue discussing issues on the bilateral, regional and international agenda.” It gave no further details.

The phone call came the day after Sarkisian suggested that Turkey will not unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia anytime soon and again threatened to annul the U.S.-brokered protocols signed by the two nations in October. Clinton similarly phoned Sarkisian in December just hours after he publicly voiced such a threat for the first time.