I Am Ready to Take All Our Maps with Me and Call on the Azerbaijani President to Bring All Our Prisoners with Him: Pashinyan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has reaffirmed his readiness to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and addressed the issues of returning prisoners and maps of mined territories. This statement was made by the head of the government during a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community in Vilnius, in response to a question from one of the attendees.

“You see, the Azerbaijani president has stated that he is ready to meet with me. I should say that I announced back in July that we are ready to meet at both high and highest levels, meaning that we are prepared to meet at both the ministerial level and the prime minister-president level. Recently, in my speech at the UN General Assembly, I stated that the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh awaits its resolution, and I can say that we have welcomed the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group's statements multiple times, where they reiterate the necessity of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and restoring the peace process for this purpose,” said Nikol Pashinyan.

In this context, the prime minister noted that he declares once again, as in the past, that he is ready to meet with the Azerbaijani president. “To your specific question, I can provide the following response: at the upcoming anticipated meeting, I am ready to take with me the maps that are in question, and the maps in question are those that do not separate the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan, meaning that they do not have any military practical security significance, but only have humanitarian significance because they are located behind the Azerbaijani armed forces,” Pashinyan added.

He emphasized that he is ready to take all the maps we have with him and calls on the Azerbaijani president to bring back all our prisoners. The prime minister also mentioned that the Azerbaijani president complains that the quality of those maps previously handed over is not good. “We have made two clarifications: first, we provided the maps that we have, meaning we did not keep good quality maps in a drawer and give only poor quality maps. I do not exclude and also know that there is an issue with the quality of the maps, why? Because the quality of the map depends on the quality of the cartographer, their professional skills, what they have mapped, we also have that,” he said.

“We are sincere here, we are open, and we have no intention of deceiving anyone because this is not only about Azerbaijan but also about our intermediary partners, who are our friendly countries, our partners. It would not be honorable to try to do anything else in this situation. We have given the maps that we have; I mean, in terms of the area already transferred, we simply do not have other maps. And this is a fact and must be recorded as a reality.

Regarding trust, it is clear that in this situation, Azerbaijan does not trust us, and we do not trust Azerbaijan, and the whole issue is that we should try to move forward step by step in such a way that at least some trust is established. Why is that trust important? So we can also solve humanitarian issues more swiftly and return our captured brothers to their families as soon as possible,” emphasized Prime Minister Pashinyan.