No Progress Made in Armenian-Azeri Border Delimitation Talks

YEREVAN — The Armenian government essentially confirmed on Wednesday that Armenian and Azerbaijani officials did not make major progress last week during another round of negotiations on delimiting the border between their countries.

The joint session of Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions on border demarcation and delimitation took place at a relatively peaceful section of the heavily militarized frontier on July 12. It was co-chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Shahin Mustfayev.

No concrete agreements were announced following the meeting, with the Armenian Foreign Ministry saying only that the two sides “addressed a number of organizational and procedural issues.”

News.am quoted Grigoryan’s office as saying that they did not agree on which maps should be used for the delimitation purposes. “No decision was made regarding any map,” it said.

Speaking after his June 1 meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held in Moldova, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan suggested that Baku is open to accepting an Armenian proposal to use 1975 Soviet maps. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry denied that, however. It said that Azerbaijan has demarcated its borders with other neighboring states “on the basis of analyses and examination of legally binding documents, rather than any specially chosen map.”

The issue was also on the agenda of another Aliyev-Pashinyan meeting hosted by the European Union’s top official, Charles Michel, in Brussels on July 15. Michel said the two leaders “agreed to intensify and accelerate the work of the commissions.”

The practical modalities of the border delimitation are one of the stumbling blocks in ongoing talks on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.