The agreement signed by the two sides on August 30 involves “regulations” for joint activities of Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions dealing with the border delimitation process. It supposedly lays out the principles of delineating the Armenian-Azerbaijani border but does not specify which maps or other legal documents will be used for that purpose.
The regulations say that the process will be based, unless agreed otherwise, on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration in which newly independent ex-Soviet republics recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders. Earlier this month, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry downplayed the legal significance of that declaration, saying that it “has nothing to do with the question of where the borders of CIS member states lie and which territories belong to which country.”
The two opposition alliances represented in the National Assembly have pointed to that lack of specifics in their criticism of the document. Armen Rustamian, a parliamentary leader of the Hayastan alliance, said Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian only reinforced opposition concerns during a parliamentary committee meeting held on Monday.
“The Hayastan faction will not participate in this illegal process because participation could be interpreted as recognition of its legitimacy,” Rustamian said before he and his colleagues walked out of the parliament auditorium in protest.
Opposition deputies from the Pativ Unem bloc followed suit after a statement made by their leader, Hayk Mamijanian.
“There is a well-founded suspicion that these actions are designed to serve as a justification for further anti-state concessions [to Azerbaijan,]” said Mamijanian.
Parliament speaker Alen Simonian and other lawmakers from the ruling Civil Contract party scoffed at the walkout. The parliament’s pro-government majority will almost certainly ratify the border deal on Wednesday.
In the absence of the opposition, the parliamentary debate on the ratification lasted for only half an hour. A Civil Contract deputy, Sergei Bagratian, asked Grigorian whether Azerbaijan could again attack Armenia even after the deal comes into force.
“It will be very strange if a party solves one or another contentious issue by military force,” replied the vice-premier. “We have given no pretexts for such a thing to happen.”
Grigorian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Shahin Mustafayev signed the deal more than four months after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian controversially agreed to cede four disputed border areas to Azerbaijan. The unilateral land transfer sparked massive anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan in May and June. Pashinian claimed in March that Azerbaijan will attack Armenia unless it regains control of those areas.
They had been occupied by Armenian forces in 1991-1992. For its part, the Azerbaijani army seized at the time large swathes of nearby land belonging to several villages in Armenia’s northern Tavush province. It has not withdrawn from that land in return for the Armenian concessions.
Azerbaijani troops seized more Armenian territory during border clashes in 2021 and 2022. Simonian on Tuesday described the issue of its liberation, ruled out by Baku, as a “trifle.”
“We have not discussed that trifle,” the speaker told reporters. “What we have done is to define principles as a result of which we and they must withdraw from places where we are ahead.”