INFORMATION OF THE NKR STATE COMMITTEE ON PRISONERS OF WAR (POWS), THE MISSING AND HOSTAGES

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2009-01-15 18:27
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

The Azerbaijani state committee on POWs, the missing and hostages
has recently published its closing statement of 2008, in which it
has particularly mentioned that 39 Azerbaijanis are allegedly in
captivity in Nagorno Karabakh.

The NKR state committee on POWs, the missing and hostages qualifies
this message as a regular disinformation, aimed at the defamation of
the NKR authorities, and as an attempt to mislead the international
community.The NKR state committee states with all responsibility
that there are no POWs and hostages in the territory, being under
the jurisdiction of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.

The NKR authorities, strictly following the principles of the
Geneva conventions, after the military phase of the conflict with
Azerbaijan, have returned all the hostages to the Azerbaijani party,
through the mediation of the International Committee of Red Cross
(ICRC). At present, the NKR corresponding bodies timely inform
the offices of the ICRC and OSCE accredited in Stepanakert about
any fact of the Azerbaijani soldiers’ and civilians’ crossing the
Karabakhi territory, who, then, are returned to the Azerbaijani
authorities without any precondition. Representatives of the mentioned
international organizations have free access to all the institutions
of c onfinement, which rules out the possibility of hiding the fact
of the Azerbaijani hostages’ being in the NKR t territory.

The NKR state committee draws attention to the fact that repeated
suggestions of the republic’s leadership to establish direct contacts
with the analogous structure of Azerbaijan for solving the issue
of POWs, the missing and hostages effectively, have not been given
an adequate answer by the official Baku. Moreover, the Azerbaijani
authorities keep on politicizing such a humanitarian and sensitive
issue as the searching of the missing and the release of hostages,
for getting doubtful propagandistic dividends. The recent fact of
spreading the wittingly false information evidently testifies this.