– 20:23 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Baku wants to have Armenia recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan with most of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in exchange for the release of the prisoners of war, lawmaker Naira Zohrabyan told a press conference on Tuesday, June 29.

Zohrabyan revealed that after a PACE meeting, she spoke to the head of the Azerbaijani delegation, Samed Seyidov, who claimed that the Azerbaijani side holds no prisoners of war, and that Armenian soldiers who are now in Baku have allegedly committed terrorist attacks, Sputnik Armenia reports.

Azerbaijan is refusing to return all Armenian prisoners of war, in violation of the statement on the cessation of hostilities signed by the parties in November 2020. The Armenian side has information about some 200 Armenians still in Azerbaijan’s captivity, but Azeri President Ilham Aliyev claims that persons being kept in Baku are not PoWs, but “terrorists and saboteurs”. At least 19 of the hundreds of Armenian captives have been tortured and killed, according to their lawyers.

Seyidov further charged that 50% of the minefield maps transferred to Baku in exchange for 15 PoWs were "fake". At the same time, according to the Azerbaijani lawmaker, Baku is ready to consider the release of prisoners of war only if Armenia agrees to sign a peace treaty, Zohrabyan said.

Signing such a document would mean "to recognize in writing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, including that it owns 75% of Artsakh. Then, 'as a gesture of goodwill', they are ready to consider" the return of the Armenian PoWs, the Armenian lawmaker added.

Zohrabyan noted that if Baku ignores calls for the release of the PoWs coming from the European Union, then concrete sanctions should be applied against Azerbaijan. She suggested European structures to arrest the bank accounts belonging to Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and his family members.