12:16,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 15, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that Azerbaijan is avoiding by all means all options proposed for border delimitation with Armenia.
Speaking at the February 15 Cabinet meeting, Pashinyan warned that this could mean that Azerbaijan intends to launch military actions in some parts of the border with the prospect of turning it into an all-out war against Armenia.
“Have you seen Azerbaijan regularly speak about what it describes as the territories of the four villages, at the same time refusing to accept that the territories of vital importance of 31 non-enclave villages of the Republic of Armenia are under Azerbaijani occupation. Our position in this situation is highly constructive. What we are saying is that in order for the troops to pull back from their positions, it is necessary to reproduce the Armenia-Azerbaijan border on the map and on the ground and pull back the troops of the two countries from that line of the border. After the reproduction, if it turns out that there are troops before that line, they must be withdrawn from both sides against the already demarcated border. Official Baku is trying to formulate this event in a way so that the Azeri troops won’t anyhow pull back from the territories of the 31 villages in Armenia. This is not a constructive stance,” Pashinyan said.
He reiterated Armenia’s readiness for concrete solutions, principles of which are already agreed upon.
He said that the principles include the agreements signed in international platforms: the Armenia-Azerbaijan reciprocal recognition of territorial integrity based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, which should serve as the political framework for the delimitation process.
“This means that we are only left with technical work: to reproduce on the maps and on the ground the de jure 1991 border of the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSRs and solve the issue by identifying the legal grounds. The so-called exclave-enclave issue must be addressed in the same way. For example, in order to determine the territory of Artsvashen, it should be drawn based on legal documents and solve that issue as result of future talks. But Azerbaijan is regularly refusing to go for solutions, trying to take the path of localization. We are ready even for that option and to carry out demarcation province by province, by reproducing the border in every section, and then carry out the adjustment of troops deployment, according to the reproduced border line, and then go to the next section, and leave the exclave issues for the last phase,” Pashinyan said, adding that Armenia is ready for both options: to either carry out demarcation along the entire border at once or by sections.
“But it seems that Azerbaijan is rejecting this option as well. Our analysis shows that there can only be one reason for this, and the reasons could be their [intentions] to launch military actions in some parts of the border with the prospect of turning the military escalation into a large-scale war against the Republic of Armenia. This intention is read in all statements and actions made by Baku,” Pashinyan said.