Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed to swap prisoners captured during fighting in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
Armenia and Azerbaijan can come to an agreement on the principles of Nagorno-Karabakh issue settlement before the OSCE summit scheduled for December, reported Russian President Dmitri Medvedev who was the mediator of the October 27 meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“The issue of the settlement principles is yet to be solved to later become the basis of the peace treaty. Nevertheless, we have come a long way which gives a good ground for hope that if the sides work efficiently during this month, basic principles of settlement could be reconciled before the OSCE summit in Kazakhstan on December 1-2,” says Medvedev.
The main practical and political outcome of the Astrakhan meeting has become the agreement between the two presidents to exchange war prisoners.
“The parties have agreed on a joint statement, which is of humanitarian character but is a very important one. It is a special declaration providing for immediate exchange of war prisoners and bodies of those who died [in recent skirmishes on the line of contact] as confidence-building measures,” said Medvedev.