Avaz Hasanov met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of NKR Ashot Gulyan in Stepanakert. He emphasized the fact that the attempts of Azerbaijan to politicize the humanitarian issues impede the searching of the war prisoners and create additional tension. The NKR authorities created all the necessary conditions to provide the absolute transparency of the works of the state commission on issues of war prisoners and hostages. Avaz Hasanov was given the possibility to visit the towns and villages where according to the Azerbaijani propaganda, hostages of Azeri nationality were being kept. Hasanov met also the parents of the missing Armenians, according to some information, kept up to now in Azerbaijan.
The activity of the Working group was hindered a little bit by the propaganda action organized in Azerbaijan. On April 25th a list of NKR citizens as if involved in the murders and tortures of Azerbaijani war prisoners was publicized in Baku. This list includes also the name of the Karabakh colleague of Hasanov – the coordinator of the International Working group from the NKR Albert Voskanyan. The latter preferred not to make comments. However, his working relations with his colleague did not change. It is interesting that earlier Albert Voskanyan was visiting Baku as a representative of the commission on search of war prisoners, participated in the meetings with the official persons and nobody was against. Almost all the newspapers of Baku stressed this fact.
Apart from the officials, Avaz Hasanov met also the representatives of non governmental organizations, mass media and refugees in Stepanakert. Sharing his impressions on his return to Baku he told the journalists that he saw a significant progress in the life of the Karabakh people, as compared with 2001. “At present the infrastructure is developing here,” he said.
The Azerbaijani guest made another interesting observation. It appeared that there are business contacts between the Azerbaijani and Karabakh businessmen. This was proved by the fact that in the shops of Stepanakert Hasanov found deficit goods produced in Azerbaijan which, according to the “Zerkalo” newspaper, “can not be found in Baku”.
