Everything Possible Being Done to Accelerate Exchange Process of POWs- Armenia’s Deputy PM Avinyan

• 12.11.2020, 10:38
•  Armenia

On December 10 Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan chaired the session of the Inter-agency commission dealing with the issues of prisoners of war, captives and missing persons, his Office told.

"Today we are going to discuss in detail issues relating to the process of negotiations over the exchange of captives, the search operations for the missing in action and the works on identifying the bodies of the dead. I think there is no need to state once again that these issues are at the top of the agenda of the government and that the agencies involved should act as quickly as possible.

You know that we have some developments in the exchange process of POWs as on December 9 three Armenian captives have been transferred to Armenia from Azerbaijan by the mediation of the Russian peacekeepers.

Both the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides have handed the lists of POWs to the International Committee of Red Cross. Currently the process of clarifying the lists is underway. As we have already stated, we have proposed to use "all for all" principle in the exchange process of POWs, as well as to create a mechanism according to which in case of finding new POWs each of the sides should return them without preconditions. I want to note that everything possible is being done to accelerate the exchange process as much as possible.

Today we will also discuss the necessary legislative amendments, as well as issues relating to raising the efficiency of the search operations, DNA examinations, providing psychological support and operation of hot line", deputy PM Avinyan said in his remarks.

The session participants discussed the ways of further accelerating the identification process through DNA analysis and a number of other issues.

Avinyan gave respective instructions to the agencies on all the issues discussed at the session.