Friday, 18 May 2007
RA Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan received head of the International Red Cross Committee's mission in Armenia Ives Arnold.
Mr. Arnold thanked the Prime Minister for the productive and interested cooperation maintained with the committee as chairman of the state commission dealing with war prisoner, hostage and missing people questions. He said that the issue of Karabakh conflict-generated missing persons continued to be the focus of the International Red Cross Committee's attention which kept on assisting the authorities of Armenia, NKR and Azerbaijan to find out and communicate to the relatives of missing people any new details on their destiny.
The head of the International Red Cross Committee's mission in Armenia handed over to the Prime Minister the draft questionnaire and the agreement on centralized data processing for missing people and added that copies of such documents had already been transmitted to the authorities of the NKR and the Azerbaijani side. He noted that the Committee would appreciate having the comments and recommendations of the Armenian side regarding the drafts. According to Mr. Arnold, after signing the agreement, data was going to be collected by the local office of the International Red Cross Committee in Armenia and the International Red Cross Committee - in the NKR. As assured by Mr. Arnold, the Committee would act as a technical adviser and coordinator in these processes so as authentic and quality data are communicated to the authorities of all sides of the conflict.
He also informed the Prime Minister on the work done during the past period in terms of finding the missing people and informed that, starting from Armenia, an exposition was due to be launched in the region featuring the photos of missing persons. In the opinion of Mr. Arnold, as the proof of the attention given to the problem missing people, this initiative would help raise the awareness of the public over the problem.
During the meeting, it was stressed on either side that the commission, which was established by RA President's decree in 2000 to deal with the questions of war prisoners, hostages and missing people, had been cooperating with all the public agencies concerned to accomplish quite a large amount of work towards the systematization of data on missing persons as received from public, international and non-governmental organizations in order to meet the social, financial, psychological and legal requirements of the families having such missing persons.
It was also emphasized that in the absence of authentic data on missing people, it was important not to inspire to their families and relatives unreasonable hopes that they are alive as it might lead to even harder psychological shocks.
In conclusion, Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan noted that the Armenian side attached great importance to the problems of missing people, held them in the center of attention and was interested in continued and closer cooperation with all the above-said organizations.
