VILNIUS, OCTOBER 3, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan reaffirmed his readiness to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

Speaking at a meeting with the Armenian community of Lithuania as part of his official visit, PM Pashinyan also addressed the issue of POWs and the mine field maps when asked on the matter.

“Look, the President of Azerbaijan announced that he is ready to meet with me. Let me say that I had said back in July that [Armenia] is ready to meet on both high and highest levels, which means on the foreign ministerial and prime minister-president levels. In my recent speech to the UN General Assembly I said that the Nagorno Karabakh issue awaits its resolution and I can say that for several times already we have welcomed the statements by OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs where for several times they’ve noted the need for resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and restoring the peace process for this goal,” Pashinyan said.

In this context the prime minister noted that just like before, he is now also announcing that he is ready to meet with the president of Azerbaijan. “To your specifically mentioned question I can give the following answer: I am ready to take with me to the presumed upcoming meeting the maps which are talked about, and these maps are the ones which do not separate the militaries of Armenia and Azerbaijan from one another, meaning they don’t have a military practical security significance, they rather have only humanitarian significance because they are located behind Azerbaijani military lines. I am ready to take with me to the meeting all maps we have and I call on the Azerbaijani president to bring with him all captives.

Look, the president of Azerbaijan is complaining that the quality of the maps which we’ve transferred in the past is poor. Look, let’s make two records: first, we gave the maps which we had, meaning it’s not like we’ve kept the good quality maps in the drawer and gave them the bad ones. I do not rule out and I know that there is an issue with the quality of maps, why? Because the quality of the map depends of the quality of the cartographer, their professional skills, we have what they drew. And here we are honest, open, and we don’t have intentions to deceive anyone, because this isn’t only about Azerbaijan, but also our mediator partners, who are our friendly countries, our colleagues. It wouldn’t be honorable to try and do something in another way in that situation. We gave the maps we had, we don’t have other ones, I mean in terms of the terrain which we’ve already transferred. This is a fact, this must be noted as reality. Regarding trust, it is clear that Azerbaijan doesn’t trust us in this situation, we don’t trust Azerbaijan and the whole issue is for us to try and move forward with small steps in a way for there to develop some kind of trust. This trust is important so that we are able to solve also humanitarian issues swiftly, and return our captive brothers to their families as soon as possible,” Pashinyan said.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan