The U.S. State Department said that recent congressional action to recognize the Armenian Genocide does not reflect the policy of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, the Voice of America reports.

In a short statement Tuesday, December 17, the department said the Trump administration's position on the matter is unchanged.

The Senate voted unanimously last week to recognize the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago as a genocide. The House had previously adopted a similar bill in the face of stark protests from NATO ally Turkey.

"The position of the Administration has not changed," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a terse two-sentence statement. "Our views are reflected in the president’s definitive statement on this issue from last April."

On April 24, President Donald Trump commemorated Armenian Remembrance Day in a statement that honored "the memory of those who suffered in one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century." In keeping with longstanding U.S. policy, the statement did not use the term “genocide."