Day: March 12, 2024
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Tuesday said that the four villages that Baku says Armenia is “occupying” and called for their immediate “return” are not de-jure part of the sovereign territory of Armenia.
Pashinyan made the statement during a press conference on Tuesday, days after Azerbaijan’s Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev said that the “immediate liberation” of the four villages must take place before the two sides start delimiting and demarcating their border.
In a statement issued over the weekend, Mustafayev identified Baghanis Ayrum, Ashagh Askipara, Kheirimli and Ghezelhajili as the four villages in question.
“The names of the villages being circulated in the Azerbaijani media have never existed in the territory of the Republic of Armenia — not during the Soviet era nor after,” Pashinyan said, brandishing a cutout of a map of Armenia.
“First, let’s define the territory of the Republic of Armenia so that we can clearly formulate where and why Azerbaijan has territorial claims against Armenia and where, essentially, it does not have or may not have any territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinyan added. He then showed the press conference participants the territory of Armenia on the map and emphasized that the enclave and non-enclave villages that Azerbaijan is claiming are not within the sovereign territory of Armenia.
The villages in question are among eight border areas, most of them enclaves inside Armenia, which were controlled by Azerbaijan during the Soviet times and were seized by the Armenian army in the early 1990s. For its part, the Azerbaijani side at the time seized a larger Armenian enclave, as well as large swathes of agricultural land belonging to this and several other border communities of Armenia. Azerbaijani forces occupied more Armenian territory during border clashes in 2021 and 2022.
The four villages are inside Armenia’s northern Tavush province bordering western Azerbaijan. They are strategically located along one of the two main Armenian highways leading to Georgia as well as the pipeline supplying Russian natural gas to Armenia via Georgia.
Pashinyan declared that local sections of that transport and energy infrastructure “going beyond Armenia’s de jure territory” should be rerouted “so that they pass through Armenia’s de jure territory and so that we don’t have problems in that area.” He said he has already issued relevant instructions to Armenian government bodies.
At the same time Pashinyan said that ”there has never been and cannot be any discussion about handing over any village of the region of Tavush to Azerbaijan.’’
Pashinyan went on to suggest that the delimitation process, which he said should take place without any delays, can begin the Tavush Province.
He said that the de jure border that existed at the time of the collapse of the USSR was reaffirmed by the Alma-Ata Declaration and the agreements held in Prague on October 6, 2022, and that the Alma-Ata Declaration became the basis for recognizing borders and mutual territorial integrity. Official Baku, however, has refused to conduct the delimitation process based on the said declaration — a process backed by the European Union.
Pashinyan said that the border delimitation and demarcation process must at best “reproduce” the borders as delineated in the Alma Ata declaration, noting that it is important to record “what is Armenia and what isn’t Armenia and what is Azerbaijan and what isn’t Azerbaijan.”
“And when making decisions about this process, we should proceed from a comprehensive analysis of the realities and the situation, along with the logic of managing the existing security challenges around Armenia and the requirements for ensuring the stability of the situation,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan’s statements on Tuesday and announcements by other government officials have angered the opposition, which says the prime minister is ceding more territory to Azerbaijan in order to appease Baku’s demands in the peace negotiations.
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NPR News: 03-12-2024 6PM EDT
The United States warned that Azerbaijan’s continued demand for a “land corridor” through Armenia to Nakhichevan will elevate the risk of armed conflict, saying that relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan will likely remain tense.
This assessment, made by the U.S. intelligence community, was made in the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment report presented to Congress on Monday by the leaders of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.
“Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are likely to remain tense,” the report said.
“Nevertheless, the lack of a bilateral peace treaty, the proximity of their military forces, the lack of a cease-fire enforcement mechanism, and Azerbaijan’s readiness to use calibrated military pressure to advance its goals in talks with Armenia will remain,” the report added.
“The transition of N-K [Nagorno-Karabakh] governance from ethnic Armenians to Azerbaijanis and Azerbaijan’s demand for access to a land corridor linking Azerbaijan to its exclave will elevate the risk of armed confrontation,” the report emphasized.
Azerbaijan’s attack on Artsakh in September, that forced the mass exodus of its Armenian population was also addressed in the report, with the U.S. intelligence agencies saying that “the rapid exodus of most of the region’s ethnic Armenian population and the planned self-dissolution of the government allowed Baku to advance plans to integrate the region with Azerbaijan, effectively removing this longstanding issue from the bilateral peace agenda.”
“Azerbaijan’s retaking of Nagorno-Karabakh has reduced volatility, and a military confrontation probably would be limited in duration and intensity,” the report added.
The report also contained an assessment of Armenia as it relates to U.S. policy on Ukraine, saying that Russia’s position in the region has been weakened.
“The renewed efforts of Armenia, Moldova, and some Central Asian states to seek alternative partners highlight how the war has hurt Moscow’s influence, even in the post-Soviet space,” the report said.
“Russia’s unwillingness to expend the resources and political capital to prevent Azerbaijan from reacquiring Nagorno-Karabakh from ethnic Armenians through a military offensive in September 2023 underscores how Moscow’s war in Ukraine has weakened its role as a regional security arbiter,” the assessment added.