We believe that Armenia's retention of our military servicemen is another blow to confidence building, in accordance with the agreement reached, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov told journalists, Ednews reports.

 

The minister drew attention to the fact that the servicemen crossed the Armenian-Azerbaijani border due to difficult weather conditions and noted that the issue was discussed at both bilateral and other meetings: "Those servicemen were detained by Armenia and a criminal case was initiated against them. One of which has already been sentenced: 11 and a half years of imprisonment was decided. First of all, I would like to note that during bilateral meetings with the Armenian side, at the same time, during meetings with international mediators, as well as representatives of other states, we drew everyone's attention to this issue. We brought up the need to consider this incident as a complete violation of previous agreements and to influence Armenia in this direction. Because, as you know, recently there was an agreement between the two countries that it is important to return the servicemen who crossed the border line by mistake, and this can be evaluated as a confidence-building measure between the parties. And precisely as a result of this agreement, the Azerbaijani side returned more than 10 Armenian servicemen and civilians. We believe that the step taken by Armenia is another blow to confidence building in accordance with the agreement reached. We believe that this is a very wrong development, a very dangerous development. And we will continue our efforts in this direction."