Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Sunday, October 3 spoke about a possible meeting with Azerbaijani President, saying that he is ready to exchange all the maps of minefields the Armenian side possesses with all the prisoners of war still being held hostage by Azerbaijan.

Pashinyan made the remarks when he met with representatives of the Armenian community of Lithuania.

“The President of Azerbaijan announced that he is ready to meet with me. Let me say that I had said back in July that we are ready to meet on both high and the highest levels, which means we are ready to meet on the foreign ministerial and prime minister-president levels. In my recent speech at the UN General Assembly I said that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue awaits its resolution and I can say that for several times already we have welcomed the statements by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs where for several times they’ve noted the need for resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and restoring the peace process for this goal,” Pashinyan said.

“I am ready to take with me to the meeting all the maps [of minefields] we have and I call on the Azerbaijani president to bring with him all captives."

Pashinyan said trust between the sides to the conflict is important in terms of solving humanitarian issues swiftly.

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.