Azerbaijan releases 32 Armenians, most of whom had been held since 2020, in alternate for 2 troopers held since April.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have traded prisoners of battle at their border in a step in direction of normalising their relations three months after Azerbaijan achieved a decisive breakthrough of their decades-old battle.
The alternate passed off on Wednesday with Azerbaijan releasing 32 Armenians principally captured in late 2020 whereas Armenia launched two Azerbaijani troopers held since April.
“Thirty-one personnel from Armenia’s armed forces captured in 2020-2023 and one serviceman captured in Nagorno-Karabakh in September have crossed the Azerbaijani-Armenian border and are on Armenian territory,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan wrote on his Facebook account.
Azerbaijan’s state fee for prisoners of battle additionally launched a press release concerning the swap.
“Armenian soldiers were handed to Armenia after the International Committee of the Red Cross examined their health and made a positive conclusion,” it mentioned.
The two neighbours are additionally discussing the withdrawal of troops from their border, in keeping with the Russian state information company TASS.
The international locations mentioned final week as they introduced the prisoner alternate that they “reconfirm their intention to normalise relations and to reach a peace treaty on the basis of respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
In November, Yerevan mentioned a complete of 55 Armenian prisoners of battle had been being held by Baku, together with six civilians, 41 troopers and eight separatist leaders who had been arrested within the wake of Baku’s army operation in September, which recaptured the Nagorno-Karabakh area.
The South Caucasus neighbours have fought two wars up to now 30 years over mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan the place ethnic Armenians broke away and established de facto independence within the Nineteen Nineties.
After Azerbaijan recaptured the territory, most of its 120,000 ethnic Armenians fled to Armenia.
The prisoner alternate settlement was welcomed by the European Union and the United States, who’ve been making an attempt to influence the 2 international locations to signal a peace treaty for years.
Western mediation has stepped up after Russian affect within the area has dipped up to now two years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan had been a part of the previous Soviet Union.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/13/armenia-and-azerbaijan-exchange-prisoners-in-step-towards-normalisation?traffic_source=rss
