A group of missing soldiers’ parents said they made the suggestion at their meeting with Pashinian in his office on Monday.
The premier’s office did not release any statement on the meeting by late afternoon. But the missing soldiers’ parents said Pashinian had welcomed the idea.
“I demanded it and said, Mr. Prime Minister, let’s create a commission. He [Pashinian] said it was a great idea and that they would create one,” said Edik Arevshatian, whose son was deployed in a Nagorno-Karabakh district captured by Azerbaijani armed forces in October and has been missing since.
A DNA test has confirmed that Arevshatian’s son was among the dead, but the father claims he has gathered information suggesting that his son could still be alive and could be among Armenian captives in Azerbaijan.
“There can be no such thing… These children will come back. I will prove it by all means… Let’s create a commission, we will understand then who is to blame for it,” he said.
According to official data, the number of Armenian servicemen missing after the 44-day war is 230. There are 142 unidentified bodies in morgue refrigerators in the towns of Metsamor, Martuni, Abovian, as well as in Yerevan. Some parents have also undergone DNA tests but still await answers.
The parents of MIAs say they are not satisfied with the work of the government. “I do not see any results. If someone does something and there is no result, it means they do their work wrong. This work must be reviewed to understand where mistakes, omissions have been made to correct them and get a result,” said Yeghishe Zakunts, a missing soldier’s father.
According to the latest data of the Ministry of Health, so far 3,777 bodies and remains have been subjected to forensic examinations; 106 bodies and remains are still being identified. Many of the samples have been examined several times, but these examinations have failed to identify the persons.
The ministry has told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that negotiations are being conducted with some foreign expert organizations to send damaged samples to them for examination.