Hayastan and Pativ Unem say they want the Armenian parliament to issue a statement calling for the release of the Armenians currently held by Baku.
Ishkhan Saghatelian from Hayastan indicated that the special session will likely take place on November 12 when the parliament is scheduled to convene for its next four-day session.
According to official data, 23 ethnic Armenians are currently held in captivity in Azerbaijan. Eight of them are former military and political leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh who were detained last fall when Azerbaijan completed its takeover of the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a former autonomous oblast within Soviet Azerbaijan, enjoyed de facto independence for nearly three decades after breaking free from Baku’s rule following the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s.
Azerbaijan regained control of much of the breakaway region in a 2020 war that resulted in nearly 7,000 Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers being killed.
Azerbaijan established full control over Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023 after conducting a 24-hour offensive operation that forced more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians – virtually the entire population of the region – to flee their homes and resettle in Armenia.
Azerbaijan, which is set to host COP29 on November 11-22, has also extended an invitation to Armenia’s foreign minister to attend the UN climate change conference.
The Armenian opposition insists that Armenia should not attend the global climate summit while Armenians remain imprisoned in Azerbaijan.
“A delegation from Armenia cannot participate in the ‘international show’ initiated by [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev if we still have prisoners of war and hostages in Baku,” Saghatelian stressed.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said in parliament on Thursday that Yerevan has not yet confirmed its participation in COP29.
“Our participation in COP29 isn’t anyhow confirmed. We haven’t expressed any official response or attitude regarding this issue. Of course, we also don’t rule it out, but we should see what it is about,” Mirzoyan said, as quoted by Armenia’s state-run Armenpress news agency.
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