Two senior Armenian lawmakers made last week conflicting claims on the treaty’s likely reference to the Alma-Ata Declaration that committed newly independent Soviet republics to recognizing their Soviet-era borders.
Mirzoyan did not shed more light on the matter when he spoke after talks with Luxembourg’s visiting Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel. Echoing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s recent statement, he said only that Baku and Yerevan fully agree on 13 of the treaty’s 16 articles and are close to reaching a common denominator on the three others.
“We don't have disagreements on the text anymore,” he told a joint news conference. “The problem is that sometimes the Azerbaijani side tries to include other preconditions or issues in the overall negotiation process. Our approach is that we can sign the agreed text days very soon.”
A separate Armenian-Azerbaijani agreement publicized by the Armenian government on September 2 says that the Alma-Ata Declaration will serve as a basis for the delimitation of the long border between the two South Caucasus states. But it also makes clear that Baku and Yerevan will discard the 1991 document if they agree “in the future” on other principles of delineating the border. Mirzoyan insisted that they are not discussing any such principles at the moment.
Meanwhile, parliament speaker Alen Simonian revealed that the draft peace deal currently under discussion says nothing about the release of at least 23 Armenians, among them eight former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh, remaining in Azerbaijani captivity. He argued that the 2020 ceasefire deal that stopped the war in Karabakh already requires Baku to release all of them.
“This issue is one of the important ones [for the Armenian government,]” Simonian told journalists.
Kristine Vartanian, an opposition parliamentarian, described Simonian’s revelation as deeply troubling.
“The Armenian negotiators’ failure to put a solution to this issue at the top of the agenda of negotiations means that they accepted [Azerbaijan’s] rules of the game and can constantly be pressured with threats to harm the individuals held in captivity,” she said.