Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan Sign Ratification Bill on Border Delimitation Into Law

YEREVAN — The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have validated a framework agreement on the delimitation of the long border between the two countries.

The agreement signed on August 30 involves “regulations” for joint activities of Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions dealing with the delimitation process. It does not specify which maps or other legal documents will be used for that purpose.

The regulations outline procedural matters for both countries following the signing of the state border treaty. Key aspects include the organization of delimitation work, adoption of relevant documents, preparation of a protocol describing the state border crossing, creation of a delimitation map at the appropriate scale, and the activities of expert groups.

The regulations say that the process will be based, unless agreed otherwise, on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration in which newly independent ex-Soviet republics recognized each other’s Soviet-era borders. Earlier this month, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry downplayed the legal significance of that declaration, saying that it “has nothing to do with the question of where the borders of CIS member states lie and which territories belong to which country.” The Armenian parliament ratified the regulations on Wednesday.

President Vahagn Khachaturyan signed the ratification bill into law late on Thursday. The office of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced on Friday that he too has formally approved the border deal.

The announcement came the day after Aliyev and Pashinyan met on the sidelines of a BRICS summit held in the Russian city of Kazan. The official readouts of the talks said they discussed ongoing efforts to negotiate an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty as well as delimit the border.

The Kazan talks were attended by deputy prime ministers of the two nations who signed the August 30 deal.