{"id":1483,"date":"2025-10-22T13:07:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T13:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/?p=1483"},"modified":"2025-10-23T13:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:23:13","slug":"alen-simonyan-pows-and-hostages-must-be-released-before-any-visits-are-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/?p=1483","title":{"rendered":"Alen Simonyan: \u201cPOWs and hostages must be released before any visits are possible\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Armenian Parliament Speaker <strong>Alen Simonyan<\/strong> said on <strong>October 22<\/strong> that potential high-level visits between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders are possible but depend on concrete progress in humanitarian issues, particularly the release of prisoners of war and hostages.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t rule out the possibility that, within certain international formats, the president of Azerbaijan could visit Armenia, our country\u2019s leader could travel there, and I myself am also ready to visit Azerbaijan,\u201d Simonyan told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut there are matters that need to be resolved first,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s not only about security \u2014 it\u2019s about the detainees. It\u2019s hard for us to move forward knowing that our people are still being held, both POWs and hostages. I\u2019m optimistic, but we won\u2019t discuss this issue further until there are tangible results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Simonyan said he had raised the issue of prisoners of war and hostages not only during his <strong>private meeting<\/strong> with Azerbaijani Parliament Speaker <strong>Sahiba Gafarova<\/strong>, but also in his <strong>public remarks<\/strong> following that meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also noted that the overall tone of the talks was constructive, saying the atmosphere with Gafarova \u201cwas even better than with many other international partners.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan said on October 22 that potential high-level visits between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders are possible but depend on concrete progress in humanitarian issues, particularly the release of prisoners of war and hostages. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t rule out the possibility that, within certain international formats, the president of Azerbaijan could visit Armenia, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1484,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advocacy","category-english","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1485,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions\/1485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freearmenianhostages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}