17:20,

YEREVAN, APRIL 13, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has a perception that Azerbaijan will release more Armenian captives and negotiations in this direction continue, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said in parliament, speaking about the Pashinyan-Aliyev-Michel trilateral meeting in Brussels.

“The issue of the missing persons and the release of captives and other detainees is in our primary focus. It is the subject, topic and target of our everyday work, every hour. I can’t recall any serious discussion or meeting where this topic wasn’t brought up. Yes, to this day Azerbaijan has not fulfilled the obligation it assumed under the November 9 trilateral statement on immediately releasing all prisoners of war, captives and other detainees. By bringing forward different pretexts, then linking the issue with the minefield maps, although the November 9 statement doesn’t have any such correlation, then bringing other pretexts, and now Azerbaijan attempts to link the issue with the issue of searching for those missing in the first Karabakh war,” FM Mirzoyan said.

The FM emphasized that these issues have nothing to do with one another. And the Armenian side, nevertheless, as a sign of goodwill, has done and continues doing many humanitarian steps and expects a similar conduct from Azerbaijan, both for humanitarian reasons and because it is simply Azerbaijan’s obligation under the agreement.

“As expected this subject was discussed during the latest meeting between the Armenian Prime Minister, the Azerbaijani President and the [President of the European Council] Charles Michel. And there is a perception that a new group of Armenian captives must be released. We now continue negotiating over this,” the FM said.

Mirzoyan said there are many mediations in this matter because the issue is of highly humanitarian nature. He reminded that Russia, France and the US have continuously offered mediations and each of them at a given period of time recorded success, but also other colleagues like Charles Michel’s office, Hungary.