Armenian Parliament rejects provocative statement of ex-president's party on border delimitation with Azerbaijan

The Armenian Parliament has rejected the draft statement of the National Assembly on delimitation and demarcation of the border with Azerbaijan submitted by the opposition faction "Armenia".

The document stated the necessity of delimitation and demarcation "only after the formation of an atmosphere of trust, and not now, against the background of Baku's forceful pressure", Caliber.Az reports, citing Armenian media.

As Artur Khachatryan, an MP from Kocharyan's Armenia faction, noted, the authorities within the framework of delimitation are "surrendering Armenia's territory to the enemy piece by piece".

"To prevent this, we have submitted a draft parliamentary statement to regulate the process, which the authorities call 'delimitation'. We have proposed a legal framework," Khachatryan said.

According to him, the current processes - actual demarcation, installation of border posts - are being carried out "illegally".

The Delimitation Commission has no right to make decisions, as it is not vested with such powers.

In her turn, Maria Karapetyan, an MP from the ruling Civil Contract faction, stated that "not 1 mm of Armenia's territory is ceded to anyone". And the current process is the process of reproducing the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and poles can be set up on it.

"The Foreign Relations Committee discussed the joint draft statement of Dashnaktsutyun and the empire (which empire, the MP did not specify - ed.) and rejected it, as Armenia's area is 29.743 square kilometres. The ARF's aspiration for a much larger Armenia, unfortunately, is used by the empire to reduce Armenia or deprive it of statehood," Karapetyan said.

According to her, the opposition's proposal to take as a basis the borders of Azerbaijan at the time of its accession to the CIS in September 1993 represents a rejection of Armenia's state border and a return "to the logic of military actions".

On April 19, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said after the eighth meeting of the state commissions that Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to start delimitation from the Tavush (Tovuzgala) region and to finalise the agreement on the draft regulations on joint activities of the delimitation commissions by July 1. Since the evening of the same day, residents of Armenian border villages, dissatisfied with the agreements between Yerevan and Baku, have been holding protests on the Armenia-Georgia interstate road.