The seventh joint session of Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions on border demarcation and delimitation was again co-chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Shahin Mustafayev.
An Armenian government statement on the talks held at a section of the border indicated that the commissions focused on procedural issues and, in particular, written rules for their joint work.
“The parties agreed to finalize the draft rules on the joint activity of the commissions in a short period of time,” it said.
The statement said nothing about substantive issues, notably the mechanism for border delimitation.
Armenia insists on using late Soviet-era military maps as a basis in that process. Azerbaijan rejects the idea backed by the European Union. Senior Armenian officials have suggested that Baku is reluctant to recognize Armenia’s current borders and wants to leave the door open for future territorial claims.
Azerbaijani leaders regularly accuse Armenia of occupying “eight Azerbaijani villages.” They refer to border areas, most of them enclaves inside Armenia, which were controlled by Azerbaijan in Soviet times and occupied by the Armenian army in the early 1990s.
For its part, the Azerbaijani side seized at the time a bigger Armenian enclave as well as large swathes of agricultural land belonging to this and other border communities of Armenia. It occupied more Armenian territory during border clashes in 2021 and 2022.
The Armenian government says that a total of 200 square kilometers of Armenia’s internationally recognized territory adjacent to 31 communities is now controlled by Azerbaijan. It says that it is ready, in principle, to consider swapping the formerly Azerbaijani enclaves for those lands or seek other compromise solutions.
Grigorian’s office confirmed on Wednesday that Baku continues to deny occupying any Armenian territory and insists on unilateral territorial concessions by Yerevan.