Day: March 7, 2024

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Senior Armenian and Azerbaijani officials held on Thursday another round of direct negotiations on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, a key hurdle to a comprehensive peace deal between the two nations.

The seventh joint session of Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions on border demarcation and delimitation was again co-chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan 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.

Grigoryan’s office confirmed on Wednesday that Baku continues to deny occupying any Armenian territory and insists on unilateral territorial concessions by Yerevan.

Sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected, as such Cyprus is ready to support Armenia both politically and substantively, the Cypriot foreign minister Constantinos Kombos said during a press conference in Yerevan on Thursday.

Referring to developments in the Caucasus region, the minister emphasized that Cyprus has expressed unequivocal support for the people of Armenia from the outset and has sent humanitarian aid to meet the needs of forcibly displaced people from Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Aggression, revisionism, displacement—all these are intolerable tools from the perspective of the international community. Coercion and the use of force cannot serve as alternatives to dialogue and peaceful dispute resolution,” Kombos said.

“Sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected, and adherence to the UN Charter is an important principle for us. As members of the international community, we are obligated to oppose aggression and revisionism and to support Armenia both politically and materially,” added Kombos and noted that Cyprus welcomes all efforts to normalize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In response to a reporter’s question about the response by the international community, including the European Union and Cyprus, in the event of a violation of Armenia’s territorial integrity and Azerbaijan’s attempts to destabilize the region, the Cypriot foreign minister responded that all must be committed to the principles of the UN Charter. “There is no alternative.”

The Cypriot official added that his country has been a victim of aggression and illegal invasion for 50 years by Turkey.

Kombos’ visit to Armenia comes days after his Greek counterpart visited Yerevan and pledged to advance military cooperation with Armenia.

Armenia, Greece and Cyprus signed military cooperation agreements last fall, with the Greek foreign minister welcoming Armenia’s new military ties with France and India.

As part of an effort to bolster military cooperation with Tehran, Armenia’s Defense Minister Suren Papikyan on Thursday met with President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran.

In addition to discussing issues related to regional security, the two leaders also discussed cooperation in the defense sector.

“On the sidelines of my official visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran, I met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The meeting centered on discussions regarding Armenian-Iranian cooperation, including in the defense sector. We shared our approaches to regional security issues,” Papikyan said in a social media post.

On the first day of his visit, Papikyan met with his Iranian counterpart, Reza Ashitani, who told the visiting Armenian dignitary that the Caucasus region should not become the site of competition for other powers, presumably referring to the efforts by the West to forge closer relations with Armenia.

Ashitani and Papikyan agreed to strengthen relations between the two neighboring countries.

Strengthening relations with all its neighbors is part of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, but Armenia enjoys special importance and the relations between the two have been growing in different areas ever since Armenia’s independence, Ashitani said, according to the IRNA news agency.

Iran’s leader’s however, have voiced concerns about the bolstering of relations between Armenia and the European Union — and by extension with other Western powers, including the United States.

“Seeking security outside the region has the opposite outcome, turns the region into a place of power conflict and brings about more challenges to regional peace and stability,” Ashitani told IRNA.

He also emphasized that Iran has always supported comprehensive peace and stability in the region.

“The decisive stance of the Islamic Republic is to support the territorial integrity of the countries in the region and their right to sovereignty over their land and no change to the internationally-recognized borders,” Ashtiani emphasized, adding that Iran adheres to this policy in the Caucasus region, supports direct negotiations between its two neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia and considers it a basis for peace, progress, and development.

Papikyan praised what he called “historic relations” between the two countries and voiced Yerevan’s readiness to expand and strengthen those ties.

“It is very important that both countries have similar views on regional stability, we should strive for closer relations in order to develop and achieve regional security,” Papikyan added.