Armenian defence minister, Red Cross official discuss cooperation

Arminfo
23 Feb 05

YEREVAN

Armenian Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan today met Isabelle Barras,
head of the eastern European department of the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC).

During the meeting, the defence minister stressed the effective
humanitarian role of the ICRC, the press secretary of the Armenian
Defence Ministry, Col Seyran Shakhsuvaryan, has told Arminfo news
agency.

For her part, Isabelle Barras thanked the Armenian defence minister
for providing quick and operational information and expressed her hope
that this cooperation will continue. The minister stressed that the
Armenian side will continue taking such an approach and at the same
time, expressed the opinion that a similar approach by the Azerbaijani
side to the issue of providing operational information will promote
the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

Ms Barras said that the ICRC’s working style is the same in its work
with all the conflicting sides. During the meeting, the sides
discussed the work of the standing commissions for missing persons
working in Armenia, Karabakh and Azerbaijan and the work of public
organizations cooperating with these commissions.

Taking into consideration the scale and importance of work on
searching for missing persons, collecting and processing information
and exchanging prisoners of war, the Armenian defence minister
specially stressed the importance of cooperation between organizations
which are working and being established in Azerbaijan and the Nagornyy
Karabakh Republic [NKR], will be dealing with the problems of
prisoners of war and missing persons and maintain daily contact with
the ICRC.

Isabelle Barras also promised that for its part, the ICRC will render
technical, consultative and training assistance for the fully-fledged
work of the structure.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress