Karabakh official accuses Azerbaijan of hampering confidence building

Arminfo, Yerevan
2 Feb 05

STEPANAKERT

Three of the four prisoners of war, Aristakes Martirosyan, Gevorg
Khlgatyan and Egiya Unanyan, who were recently handed over to the
Armenian side by Azerbaijan, are contract servicemen of the Nagornyy
Karabakh defence army, not residents of Karabakh, Viktor Kocharyan,
chairman of the state commission of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic
[NKR] for prisoners of war, hostages and missing persons, has told our
Arminfo correspondent in Stepanakert.

Viktor Kocharyan said that they lost their way while on duty on 26
November 2004 and found themselves on enemy territory, where they were
captured by the Azerbaijani army. On the day of the incident, the
state commission asked the head of the Stepanakert office of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, (?Mireille Pinard), to help
find out about the fate of the prisoners of war and take measures to
free them. The verbal reply of the office head showed that she had no
information about this issue. He said this was not the first time that
the Azerbaijani authorities had not informed the representative office
of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Azerbaijan about
Armenian captives.

“As for the NKR state commission for prisoners of war, hostages and
missing persons, in these cases, it immediately notifies the local
representative office of the International Committee of the Red Cross
and takes joint measures to return them home,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry was well aware that the
Armenian servicemen had been taken captive, the chairman of the state
commission stressed. Under a preliminary agreement, it should have
handed them over to the Armenian side in the village of Bas Qarvand
[in Agdam District] on 31 December. He said that representatives of
the Armenian side vainly spent five hours at the appointed place,
waiting for the Azerbaijani side to turn up.

“The prisoners of war were handed over only on 28 January, and there
was no machine gun fire on the positions of the Azerbaijani armed
forces, as the Azerbaijani media reported,” Viktor Kocharyan
said. This is not the only piece of disinformation disseminated by the
Azerbaijani media, he said. He pointed out that the Azerbaijani media
had disseminated information saying that “the Armenian prisoners of
war had allegedly confessed that corruption is reigning in the
Armenian army”. “The NKR state commission for prisoners of war,
hostages and missing persons has reliable information about thriving
corruption in the Azerbaijani army,” Viktor Kocharyan said. He
stressed that the latest defections of Azerbaijani servicemen to the
Armenian side took place, according to the defectors themselves,
because their commanders had been treating them cruelly and the
military conscription offices had been extorting large sums of money
from them.

Viktor Kocharyan stressed that such anti-Armenian reports in the
Azerbaijani media, which are far from reality, do not further the
building of confidence between the conflicting sides and may
complicate cooperation in discovering and handing over prisoners of
war, hostages and missing persons.