The U.S. State Department has confirmed U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick’s call on the Nagorno-Karabakh separatists for release of the two Azerbaijani hostages, APA reports.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki commented on Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbadyan’s statement that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs haven’t made a call on release of the hostages: “I certainly made those calls at the press conference. So those reflect the position of the Department and everybody up in the senior ranks”.
The U.S. State Department called on the Armenian side to return two Azerbaijani hostages Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev, taken hostages in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.
“We’ve previously advocated through Ambassador Warlick and others the release of these two prisoners to the Government of Azerbaijan. We also urged relevant authorities to return the two prisoners to the Government of Azerbaijan. The sides have generally found a way in the past to return prisoners as a humanitarian gesture, and such humanitarian gestures have been shown to reduce tensions and build trust between the sides,” said State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, at a daily press briefing.
The Nagorno-Karabakh separatist regime states that it will disregard Psaki’s call on release of Azerbaijani hostages Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev. Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbadyan said that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs haven’t made such a call.
In July 2014, Russian citizen Dilgam Asgarov and Azerbaijani citizen Shahbaz Guliyev were taken hostage by the Armenians on their way to visit their relatives’ graves in Kalbajar, another Azerbaijani citizen, IDP from Jabrayil district Hasan Hasan was shot dead. Hasanov’s body was taken from the opposing side and buried in Baku. On 19 December 2014, the “court” of the separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh sentenced Dilgam Asgarov to life in prison and Shahbaz Guliyev to 22 years.
APA