Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan questioned at the weekend Azerbaijan’s stated respect for Armenia’s territorial integrity while reaffirming his readiness to unilaterally hand over some of the contested border areas to Baku.
The four areas used to be occupied by four Azerbaijani villages occupied by Armenian forces in 1991-1992 and later incorporated into Armenia’s northern Tavush province. For its part, Azerbaijan seized at the time large swathes of agricultural land belonging to several Tavush villages. It continues to deny occupying any Armenian territory.
Pashinyan first signaled plans to give away the four uninhabited and ruined villages on March 12, prompting uproar from many Armenian residents of adjacent Tavush villages. They argue that they would lose access to their existing agricultural land, have trouble communicating with the rest of the country and be far more vulnerable to Azerbaijani armed attacks.
The Armenian opposition has also condemned Pashinyan’s plans, saying that they would not only hurt Tavush residents but also encourage Baku to make further territorial claims to Armenia. Opposition leaders have dismissed as scaremongering the premier’s claims that Azerbaijan will invade Armenia unless the latter makes the unilateral territorial concessions.
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“Azerbaijan is trying to find excuses to start a new, large-scale war in the region,” Pashinyan told members of his Civil Contract party in the southern town of Artashat. “Our political position, message is that Armenia has no claims going beyond its internationally recognized territory, including to the territory of the villages mentioned by Azerbaijan.”
He complained that Baku is reluctant to reciprocate his stance by explicitly recognizing Armenia’s territorial integrity and committing to a genuine demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
“If Azerbaijan … really wants to embark on a delimitation and demarcation of the border, we are ready for that, and the application or non-application of the formula mentioned by me will enable us to bring clarity into this matter and draw conclusions,” he said.
Yerevan has said, at least until now, that the two sides should use Soviet military maps drawn in the 1970s as a basis for the border delimitation. Its position has been backed by the European Union but rejected by Baku.
“At this stage, Azerbaijan has separated the issue of those four villages from other issues of the demarcation package,” Tigran Grigorian, a political analyst, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday. “The Armenian authorities’ expectation that this [unilateral Armenian withdrawal] could happen parallel to an agreement of the maps is, of course, unrealistic.”
Pashinyan’s political opponents say that Armenia is not gaining anything in exchange for more and more concessions offered by him to Baku and that this appeasement policy will not lead to a lasting peace between the two South Caucasus nations.