Vietnam announced on November 4 that it was working “closely” with Iran to determine the condition of an oil tanker captured by the Revolutionary Guards two weeks ago, AFP has reported.

On October 24, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) confiscated the Vietnam-flagged MV Southys oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, which is still in the vicinity of Bandar Abbas.

“We continue to closely follow the developments and work closely with Iranian authorities to resolve this issue in accordance with the law and enact necessary measures to safeguard the rights and interests of Vietnamese nationals,” Pham Thu Hang, deputy spokesperson in Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Thursday.

Iran celebrated its confiscation of the oil tanker on national television Wednesday, the day before the 42nd anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Iran seized the Vietnam oil tanker amid raised tension with the united states over Iran’s nuclear program.

Contradictory reports about a confrontation between Guard and the U.S Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet were reported on Iranian state TV this week. Iran described the incident as a scene of American aggression against Iran in the Gulf of Oman, with the U.S.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has said that only 25 percent of maps of landmines Armenia submitted after the end of the war is correct.

In an interview with CNN Turk on August 14, Aliyev said that Yerevan is acting “insincerely” as Armenia won’t give Azerbaijan maps of minefields, and the accuracy of the maps provided at the latest stage is only 25 percent.

Reminding that Armenia planted hundreds of thousands of mines in Azerbaijan’s newly-liberated lands during the three decades of occupation, Aliyev stressed that 150 civilians and servicemen have been killed or injured by landmines.

“Therefore, demining and infrastructure work is underway in the liberated lands – in Karabakh and East Zangazur. When you go there, you will see large infrastructure projects – roads, power lines, water lines, airports, railways. After all, life cannot return there without all this. At the same time, the master plan of Aghdam was approved on 28 May, on our Independence Day, and work is already underway there,” Aliyev said.

On June 12, Azerbaijan returned 15 Armenians to Yerevan in exchange of maps of 97,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in Aghdam region

Armenia on July 3 submitted maps of 92,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines planted in Fuzuli and Zangilan regions during the years of occupation in exchange of 15 Armenian border violators.

Over 20 Azerbaijani citizens, including 14 civilians have been killed and more than 85 injured in mine explosions since Azerbaijan regained control over its territories in November 2020.

Armenia had refused to provide maps of thousands of mines it planted in Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven surrounding regions that it occupied since the war in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Ceyhun Bayramov has said that the Armenian authorities must demonstrate a political will for achieving peace in the region.

Bayramov made the remarks at the Diplomatic Forum in Antalya (Turkey) on June 19.

The minister reminded that Azerbaijan has repeatedly called on Armenia to sign a peace agreement, stressing that “this is a political two-way process. To achieve it, bilateral measures are needed.”

“We were calling and are calling on Armenia to a peace agreement… There have never been such cases in history when one of the parties to the conflict provided the other party with a ready-made peace agreement and asked to sign it,” Bayramov stressed.

The minister noted that Azerbaijan’s proposal to improve relations remains relevant, but the Armenian side does not accept it.

He also criticized the use of term “Nagorno-Karabakh conflict”, reminding that the conflict was over after the November 10 trilateral statement that ended the six-week-war between the two countries in autumn 2020.

The war in 2020, referred to the Second Karabakh War, saw Azerbaijan liberate most of its Nagorno-Karabakh region as well as the seven adjacent regions that Armenian had kept as a buffer zone since the war in the early 1990s.