Stepanakert agrees to visits of relatives of saboteurs serving their  sentence in Artsakh 

ArmInfo. The settlement of the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict should be based on the recognition of the fact that the people of Artsakh exercise their right to  self-determination. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and the candidate  for presidency of Artsakh, Masis Mayilyan, stated this in an  interview with the Armenian service of the Radio Liberty.

According to him, this right of the people of Artsakh has already  been realized. This realization should be based on the fact that the  Republic of Artsakh has been established and the entire negotiation  process should be based on the recognition of this fact, because this  is the essence of the conflict.

Responding to talks about the possibility of "surrendering  territories," the Foreign Minister emphasized that the current  authorities of Armenia are probably the only authorities who do not  speak about surrendering territories at all. "This is ridiculous, and  is just a topic for internal speculation. But I'll present my  position as the head of the Foreign Ministry and a likely  presidential candidate. If they talk about some lands or about  communities, then this is an attempt to distort the essence of this  conflict, which can lead to completely other processes, other  results. I know that there is no document on the table and no  substantive negotiations are ongoing. Work is underway to create an  environment, they are discussing, and as a result of these  discussions an event was organized when journalists from Artsakh and  the Republics Armenia visited Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijani journalists  visited Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia. It is about the so  called confidence strengthening steps, "Mayilyan noted, adding that  the visit of journalists was organized directly by three countries -  Artsakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan through the personal Representative  of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk.

 "One of the new ideas, which has not yet been implemented, is to  organize visit of relatives of saboteurs who are serving their  sentence in Artsakh, as well as visits of relatives of Armenian  hostages in Azerbaijan," the head of the Foreign Ministry said. He  added that negotiations are underway and the official Stepanakert has  already agreed to this.

Masis Mayilyan also noted that there are ideas, for example, that  during harvesting the parties should be more careful, and do not  hinder with the peasants to collect their crops. "Such steps should  be taken to create this environment, the risks should be reduced.  After Dushanbe, the ceasefire is generally respected, and over the  past year the parties manage to maintain a fairly more stable  situation than in previous years, this is also a fact. This will all  contribute to the formation of an environment that will allow us to  gradually switch to meaningful negotiations, during which the  presence of Artsakh and the restoration of this format will have key  importance, "the Foreign Minister of Artsakh concluded.