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    Categories: 2021

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 01/09/2021

                                        Saturday, 

Armenian, Azeri Security Chiefs Meet Again


Russia -- Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, 
hosts a meeting of his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, Moscow, December 
28, 2020.

The heads of Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s main security services met again on 
Saturday to discuss the implementation of the Russian-brokered agreement to stop 
the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In a short statement, Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) said the meeting 
took place in no-man’s-land at a section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border 
about 70 kilometers south of Yerevan.

The statement said NSS Director Armen Abazian and the chief of Azerbaijan’s 
State Security Service, Ali Nagiyev, discussed “the exchange of prisoners and 
the search for missing persons.” “Contacts on these topics are continuing,” it 
added without elaborating.

Abazian and Nagiyev already discussed these issues late last month at a meeting 
in Moscow hosted by Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security 
Service. The NSS said afterwards that they reached unspecified “understandings.”

The ceasefire deal brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 9 
calls for the exchange of all prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians held by the 
conflicting sides. So far 54 Armenians have been freed and returned home. Dozens 
of others remain in Azerbaijani captivity.

They include 62 Armenian soldiers who were taken prisoner in early December when 
Azerbaijani forces seized the last two Armenian-controlled villages in 
Karabakh’s Hadrut district occupied by them during the six-week war.

In a letter to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres publicized 
earlier this week, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov branded the 
soldiers as “saboteurs” and indicated the Azerbaijani authorities’ intention to 
prosecute them on relevant charges.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry on Saturday condemned Baku’s plans as a gross 
violation of international law and the Karabakh truce agreement. It accused the 
Azerbaijani side of “using Armenian prisoners of war as hostages to advance its 
political agenda.”


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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Aram Torosian: