Azatutyun.am. Armenia may agree to sign a peace treaty with Azerbaijan before delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, parliament speaker Alen Simonian indicated on Friday.
Hikmet Hajiyev, a top foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, said earlier this week that Baku believes “the border delimitation issue should be kept separate from peace treaty discussions.”
“I think that we could consider such a practice because that [delimitation process] … could take years,” Simonian said, commenting on Hajiyev’s statement. “In my view, a country seeking a real peace will have no problems with such things.”
“So I think that yes, such a thing can be done after we settle some issues, sign the peace treaty and bring peace to our societies,” he told reporters.
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Ongoing border disputes have been one of the main sticking points in Armenian-Azerbaijani talks on the treaty. Armenia has said until now that the peace deal must contain a concrete mechanism for the border delimitation. It insists on using late Soviet-era military maps for that purpose. Baku rejects the idea backed by the European Union.
Yerevan also wants the treaty to explicitly uphold the territorial integrity of the two South Caucasus states. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other Armenian officials have said Azerbaijan should specifically recognize Armenia’s internationally recognized area of 29,800 square kilometers.
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, Deputy Foreign Vahan Kostanian said that Baku is “reluctant to finalize” such a peace deal. Kostanian had suggested earlier that it wants to leave the door open for future territorial claims to Armenia. Some Armenian analysts believe this is the reason why Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev keeps delaying further negotiations mediated by the United States and the European Union.