NPR News: 01-10-2024 7PM EST
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Day: January 10, 2024
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan indicated on Wednesday that Azerbaijan is reluctant to explicitly recognize Armenia’s borders through a bilateral peace treaty discussed by the two sides.
Echoing remarks by another Armenian official, Mirzoyan spoke of “some regression” in Baku’s most recent proposals regarding the treaty presented to Yerevan.
“We submitted the latest Armenian proposals [to Baku] n January 4,” he told a joint news conference with his visiting Greek counterpart George Gerapetritis. “Yes, I would say that in terms of the content, we see some regress in the Azerbaijani proposals on some articles of the text and some progress in several other directions.”
Mirzoyan did not disclose those issues. He only stressed in this regard that mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity must be the key element of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord.
“This is the issue where utmost clarity is needed and the final peace treaty must ensure this clarity,” he said. “Also, while the process of delimitation and demarcation of the two countries’ border may take long, we must see in the peace treaty a clear basis upon which the delimitation process must take place.”
“I want to emphasize that territorial integrity and inviolability of borders and border delimitation are the two issues on which Armenia cannot allow any ambiguity,” added Mirzoyan.
Senior Azerbaijani officials said last month that the two sides should sign the treaty before agreeing on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Armenian analysts and opposition figures suggested that Baku wants to leave the door open for territorial claims to Armenia.
In October, Azerbaijani President Aliyev again accused Armenia of occupying “eight Azerbaijani villages.” Aliyev referred to several small 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.
Armenia has proposed that the two South Caucasus states use late Soviet-era military maps as a basis for the border delimitation. The idea is backed by the European Union but rejected by the Azerbaijani side.
Aliyev twice withdrew from EU-mediated talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in October. His foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, similarly cancelled a November 20 meeting with Mirzoyan that was due to be hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Bayramov offered late last month to meet with Mirzoyan on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border without third-party mediation.
Mirzoyan on Wednesday declined to clarify whether he is ready for such a meeting. He said only that Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations have always been “direct” in essence.
The International Relations and Defense Committee of the British House of Lords held a hearing on Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia-Azerbaijan relations on Wednesday.
During the hearing, Thomas de Waal and Marina Nagai were invited to give their independent opinions to questions raised by the House of Lords committee peers.
The Armenian National Committee of UK participated in the hearing with the presence of its Chairperson Annette Moskofian.
Ahead of the hearing, the ANC-UK had sent briefings to be distributed to the committee members on war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide, destruction of cultural and religious heritage and POWs and illegal abductees.
The ANC-UK also asked Luis Moreno Ocampo, Lemkin Institute, the Tatoyan Foundation, the Etchmiadzin, HART and Global Witness to submit reports to the committee ahead of the session.
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