In a joint statement, the offices of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said the deal is the result of negotiations held by them. They pledged to discuss “more confidence-building measures in the near future.”
“The two states reaffirm their intention to normalize relations and negotiate a peace treaty based on respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said the statement.
Baku did not immediately identify the Armenian POWs that will be repatriated by it. A similar number of Armenian soldiers as well as eight current and former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh will remain in Azerbaijani captivity.
The Azerbaijani servicemen to be freed by Yerevan are apparently the conscripts who were detained in April after crossing into Armenia’s Syunik province from Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave. One of them was charged with murdering a Syunik resident one day before his detention. Armenia’s Court of Appeals sentenced him to life in prison earlier this week.
The latest prisoner deal followed U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien’s visit to Baku. O’Brien’s discussed with Aliyev U.S. efforts to kick-start talks on the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. In what may have been a related development, a U.S. special envoy for the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks, Louis Bono, met with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan in Yerevan on Thursday.