Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan today received co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of obligations and commitments by Armenia, head of the Finnish delegation to the PACE Kimmo Kiljunen and Head of the Swedish delegation to the PACE Boriana Aberg, as reported the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Armenian foreign minister highly appreciated the statements and calls that different bodies of the CoE, particularly the PACE Monitoring Committee and the co-rapporteurs on Armenia made for cessation of hostilities starting from the very first days of the 44-day war [in Nagorno-Karabakh].

The Armenian side emphasized that when Armenia and Azerbaijan were acceding to the CoE, they expressed commitment to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through exclusively peaceful means, but Azerbaijan unleashing a war was a blatant violation of this commitment.

Mirzoyan also touched upon the humanitarian issues that emerged after Azerbaijan’s aggression against Artsakh and, in this context, he stressed the importance of the unimpeded involvement of international organizations, including the competent bodies of the CoE in Artsakh. He emphasized the need for the unconditional repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war and other persons being held in Azerbaijan and, in this sense, attached importance to the discussion on Armenian prisoners of war held during the PACE Plenary Session in April 2021 and the adoption of a report on the humanitarian consequences of the war in September 2021. The importance of preservation of the Armenian religious, historical and cultural heritage in the territories of Artsakh under Azerbaijani control was also highlighted.