Azerbaijan, ICMP discuss cooperation on missing persons

Azerbaiijan’s First Deputy Prosecutor General Elchin Mammadov and UN International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) Director for Coordination and Cooperation Andreas Kleizer discussed the cooperation on missing persons on June 6.

Mammadov pointed out that the fate of 3,890 Azerbaijanis missing in the First Karabakh War is still unknown and the details are not presented by Armenia, in this context, the cooperation with the ICMP is of great importance, Report informs.

Expressing his gratitude for the reception, Kleiser noted that the Commission is ready for close cooperation with the Azerbaijani officials, in particular, the leading role in this field belongs to the prosecutor's office.

Armenia and Azerbaijan had been locked in a decades-old armed conflict over the latter’s Karabakh region. Following the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Armenia launched full-blown military aggression against Azerbaijan, marking the longest and deadliest war in the South Caucasus region. The bloody war ended with a ceasefire in 1994, which saw Armenia forcibly occupying 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. Over 30,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 3,890 went missing, and one million others were expelled from those lands in a brutal ethnic cleansing policy conducted by Armenia.

Armenia, which promised to cooperate with Azerbaijan to determine the fate of about 4,000 missing Azerbaijanis, still fails to return the bodies of servicemen, who went missing during the first Karabakh war in the early 1990s.