Armenian National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan raised the plight of Armenians detained in Azerbaijan at the 11th plenary session of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly now underway in Brussels.

The Euronest Parliamentary Assembly is an intra-parliamentary forum in which representatives of the European Parliament and the national parliaments of Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia develop closer political and economic ties with the EU. It was founded in 2003 by the European Commission and is a constituent part of the Eastern Partnership.

Simonyan, according to his office, stressed the need to send a UNESCO fact-finding mission to Nagorno Karabakh to protect the Armenian cultural heritage of the region following the mass displacement of Armenians.

Simonyan also welcomed the deployment of the EU mission in Armenia that has improved the security situation in the country's border regions.