Speaker reiterates efforts for achieving release of POWs, lambasts ex-FM Oskanian for ‘provocation’

Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan on Tuesday strongly criticized former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian for publicly urging the current authorities to suspend peace talks with Azerbaijan over the latter’s failure to release Armenian POWs and their condition.

Oskanian served as Foreign Minister under President Robert Kocharyan. 

At the same time, the Speaker said that Yerevan has been raising the issue of the POWs in all international platforms.

“If we were to suspend [the peace talks], would our prisoners return or would they be intimidated? If Mr. Oskanian has said something like this, I consider it as a provocation. I assess it as a possibility to increase the escalation,” Simonyan told reporters when asked to comment.

Speaker Simonyan said the government, through negotiations and the involvement of mediators, has been able to achieve the release of more than 150 Armenian POWs from Azerbaijan over the course of the past few years. 

The Speaker added, “We are talking so much about the prisoners, so much noise, but you forget that there were over 150 confirmed prisoners, and we have returned those people through negotiations and various mediators. We have returned more than 150 prisoners in four years, and now there are 23 confirmed prisoners remaining, 11 or 12 of whom are former high-ranking officials of Karabakh. If we make visible steps the prisoners could never return. We returned 152 confirmed prisoners to our homeland, and why don’t our detractors publiclysay something positive about this?”

He said that the Armenian government has been raising the issue of the POWs in all international platforms.

“There’s no meeting or international discussion where our representatives, including myself, haven’t raised the issue of POWs,” he added. 

Simonyan said the issue was in the focus of his earlier meeting with his Azeri counterpart. 

The Speaker said he has been regularly meeting with family members of the POWs. He said that the highly sensitive matter must not be discussed much in the public dimension, “because as experience shows, that process continues and it [release of POWs] is a priority for us.”

Multiple Armenians are facing what has been widely described as “mock trials” in Azerbaijan.

A senior Armenian security official said last week that Yerevan continues all possible efforts to achieve the release of Armenian POWs held in Azerbaijan.