Armenia parliament majority members do not deny possibility of ‘exchange of territories’ with Azerbaijan

News.am, Armenia
Nov 19 2021

To answer the question of the possible exchange of territories, we must go through the whole process of [border] delimitation and demarcation. Eduard Aghajanyan, a member of the majority "Civil Contract" Faction in the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia and Chair of the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations, stated this Friday during the traditional press briefings at the NA.

The reporters were trying to get clarifications on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's recent statements. For example, he had stated that after May 12, about 41 square kilometers of Armenian territory had come under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces. Moreover, he noted that after the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s, approximately the same amount of territory of the former Azerbaijan SSR had come under the control of the Armenian side. In this context, the reporters asked whether there could be an exchange of territories.

And the representatives of the parliamentary majority, in fact, did not rule out the possibility of an "exchange of territories" as a result of the border delimitation and demarcation process.

Thus, according to Aghajanyan, we are talking about a rather considerable amount of work.

"I believe you can imagine how much work this process assumes. I believe that as a result of quite a long work, the committee that shall be formed [in this regard] shall give an answer to that question. At the moment, I do not imagine what maps will be used and what logic the parties will be guided by. It seems to me that at this stage this issue is premature," said Aghajanyan.