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Russia to assess outcome of one-day UN mission to Karabakh, says senior diplomat

According to Sergey Vershinin, UN officials "took note of the rapid exodus of the population from Nagorno-Karabakh"

MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/. Moscow plans to assess the outcome of the United Nations’ one-day mission to Nagorno-Karabakh, the first such visit in a decade, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said at a briefing.

"As far as we know, it was a one-day UN mission, and we are currently waiting for a report," he noted. "In any case, such a UN mission visited the region for the first time in about a decade," Vershinin added.

"The one-day UN mission, in fact, did what was possible in the current situation, that is, conducted a survey of local residents and inspected the impact of the latest developments on infrastructure, primarily civilian facilities in Nagorno-Karabakh," the Russian deputy foreign minister pointed out. "The information that has been released so far makes it clear that there was no serious damage; religious buildings remained intact and so on," he said.

According to Vershinin, UN officials "took note of the rapid exodus of the population from Nagorno-Karabakh." "I’m talking about the Armenian population," he specified, adding: "However, these things need to be weighed and assessed once again."

The senior diplomat emphasized that the UN inter-agency mission, led by the UN resident coordinator in Azerbaijan, included representatives of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and a number of other institutions.