“With their signatures, Armenia and Azerbaijan certified the recognition of each other’s territorial integrity,” Pashinian declared in reference to a controversial agreement reached by Armenian and Azerbaijani officials trying to delineate the border between the two South Caucasus states.
The deal commits Armenia to ceding four disputed border areas to Azerbaijan without securing any Azerbaijani territorial concessions in return. It triggered angry protests by residents of Armenian border villages adjacent to those areas.
Pashinian and his political allies claim that the unilateral land handover will reduce the risk of another war with Azerbaijan. They emphasize the fact that the two sides agreed to use the 1991 Alma-Ata declaration as a basis for the delimitation of this and other sections of their long border.
The declaration was signed by newly independent former Soviet republics that recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders. Yerevan wants it to be referenced in the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Mirzoyan indicated that Baku continues to reject that.
“The problem is that despite the fact that our leaders have numerous times reconfirmed the mutual recognition of territorial integrity based on the Alma-Ata Declaration … we see that our neighbors are still reluctant to make concrete and strong reference to the Alma-Ata Declaration in the draft peace treaty,” he told the Al-Jazeera TV network in an interview publicized late on Tuesday.
“As soon as we come to an agreement on this issue in the context of the peace treaty, we will get very close [to signing the treaty,]” he said.
Mirzoyan spoke just days after the Armenian side received fresh Azerbaijani proposals and comments regarding the bilateral peace accord. The top Armenian diplomat is expected to meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov in Kazakhstan in the coming days or weeks.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stressed on Wednesday that talks on the treaty have been taking place “on the basis of a document prepared by Azerbaijan.” He also touted the Armenian-Azerbaijani border deal announced on April 19.
Opposition leaders in Yerevan say that Pashinian’s territorial concessions will make Armenia more vulnerable to further Azerbaijani attacks and only encourage Baku to claim more Armenian territory. They insist that Aliyev has no intention to recognize Armenia’s borders.