Azerbaijan should demand Armenia to give maps of mine fields in the case of peace agreement: anti-mine campaign official

He said the issue of mine clearing in the Azerbaijani territories was on agenda before the release of the Madrid Principles. “British HALO TRUST is conducting mine sweep in Nagorno-Karabakh, but this organization didn’t officially address and report to the government of Azerbaijan and didn’t pay attention to its demands.

“Azerbaijani Army liberated nearly 30 villages from the occupation in the successful winter operations in 1994 and since than the Defense Ministry’s pioneer troops cleared nearly 41,000 mines in the dirty fields of those villages. Nagorno Karabakh and nearby regions have been under the occupation since 1993 and both battle fields and buffer zones were mined. If peace agreement is reached, the field engineers must be sent there before the civilians to identify scale of danger," he said.

Safikhanov said Armenia didn’t join the UN Mine Ban Convention so far under the pretext of Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

/APA/