Demarcation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Border is a Prerequisite for Any Peace Treaty

YEREVAN — Armenia continues to believe that its peace treaty with Azerbaijan should spell out a mechanism for delimiting the border between the two countries, a senior Armenian lawmaker said on Thursday, reacting to Baku’s efforts to delink the two issues.

“If this principle is not adopted and implemented, it will be unclear how the delimitation process will take place,” Sargis Khandanyan, the chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on foreign relations, told reporters.

Khandanyan also made clear that Yerevan insists on using the most recent Soviet military maps printed in the 1970s as a basis for ascertaining the long and heavily militarized Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

The leaders of the European Union and its key member states, France and Germany, backed this stance in a joint statement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan issued after their meeting in Spain last October.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reiterated Baku’s rejection of the proposed mechanism for border delimitation on Wednesday. He said that it favors the Armenian side.

“They [the Armenians] want to put aside maps of the 1960s, 1950s and 1940s and refer to the 1970s because our historical lands had been given to them by that time,” Aliyev said in a televised interview. “Therefore, we strongly opposed and oppose that.”

Echoing statements by other Azerbaijani officials, Aliyev said that the border should be delimited after the signing of the peace treaty. He did not cite any concrete delimitation mechanism acceptable to Baku.