YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan is delaying the process of exchanging the bodies of the victims of the war, the State Service of Emergency Situations of Artsakh told ARMENPRESS.

So far, search operations have retrieved the bodies of 693 killed Armenian servicemen, according to the spokesperson of the State Service of Emergency Situations Hunan Tadevosyan.

“The police and Defense Army detachments have already joined us. It is difficult to negotiate with the Azerbaijani side, the exchange process is being delayed. Generally the Azerbaijani side is very much obstructing this work, they don’t give agreement or when they do, they abandon their agreement the next day for unclear reasons,” Tadevosyan said.

Tadevosyan said they haven’t yet searched the regions of Zangelan, Fizuli, Jabrayil and south from Hadrut as the ICRC is still negotiating with Azerbaijan.

In terms of exchange of prisoners of war and captives, Tadevosyan says the negotiations are underway on the highest level, with the Russian high-ranking military officers involved in the process, but there are still no results.

Meanwhile, the ICRC says it is participating in the process of retrieving and returning the bodies since November 13.

“We help the sides so that they are able to organize that process in more secure conditions. We participate in negotiations almost on a daily basis, every day when these processes take place we participate as a mediator. All our negotiations with the sides on such matters are confidential and we can’t tell you what we are negotiating about,” said Eteri Musayelyan, a spokesperson for the ICRC mission in Nagorno Karabakh.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan