Negotiations and conversations related to prisoners exist in all formats, we take these conversations to all possible places. Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan said this in a briefing with journalists.
"It is not included in the peace treaty, it is included in the statement of November 9, where Russia and Azerbaijan undertake the return of other persons and prisoners, which Russia and Azerbaijan are not doing at this stage. Does this mean that Russia and Azerbaijan are going to remove their signature from November 9 or not? This issue is very important," said Alen Simonyan.
"You know, as of now, there are 23 confirmed prisoners, 11 of them, if I'm not mistaken, are military-political leaders, and the rest are people taken at different times. That question is constantly debated. Azerbaijan is showing itself very negatively, and it can be said that I even raised this issue during my meeting with the Azerbaijani counterpart and I consider that if the Azerbaijani side wants the conversation that we started at the parliamentary level to be effective, they should mediate in some way through the parliament, and with that parliamentary platform we can bring our captives back as quickly as possible," he said.
Regarding the question of whether Armenia can make the issue of prisoners a precondition for Armenia's participation in COP29 in Baku, the Speaker of the National Assembly said.
"It is still too early to hold those discussions, and we must understand, fix one thing - it is not Azerbaijan that is the inviting party of COP29. It is a UN event. There was a news report that Azerbaijan is inviting Armenia, which sounds absurd, because the inviter is the UN, because the event is within their framework. Second, we need to understand whether our participation is appropriate and whether the return of prisoners will happen in the case of a possible conclusion of a peace treaty. It would be nice to have everything together in logic."
