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Former Deputy Defense Minister of Armenia Artak Zakaryan, a candidate of the I’m Honored bloc running in the June 20 snap parliamentary elections, on Tuesday denounced Nikol Pashinyan for using the release of 15 Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) by Azerbaijan in exchange for maps of mined areas as an election campaign tool.

“The negotiations have been going on for a long time. They refused to provide maps of mined areas several times. The process was delayed to the election period to also turn it into a campaign tool for the capitulator,” he said.

He noted that the mine maps could have been swapped for the prisoners 5-6 months ago, however the authorities delayed the process to the election period allowing the POWs to be subjected to torture to “mislead and fool the public again”.

The former deputy minister said that the maps are of great strategic significance, since the mined areas prevented Azerbaijan from unleashing hostilities against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) for many years.

“The maps also go to prove how strong protection was provided by the former authorities. Mining is part of the engineering work. It’s about some 97,000 landmines in the area of Akna alone,” he said.

Zakaryan said it is important for Azerbaijan to quickly populate the town of Akna (Aghdam), because it already poses a threat to Karabakh.

“This is why they purchased the maps from the capitulators, and the latter sold the maps, to put it bluntly, because if he [Pashinyan] had really cared about our captives, he would have resolved this issue long ago, there would have been no discussions,” he said.