Pashinyan: Armenia-Azerbaijan border commissions making rapid progress

Armenia and Azerbaijan are making faster-than-expected progress on border demarcation, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on January 14. 

Speaking at a security forum, Pashinyan said the joint statement by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington marked an important milestone towards institutionalising the peace established between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Caliber.Az reports, citing Armenian media. 

He said the demarcation commissions are working more efficiently than initially anticipated and that agreements on reopening regional transport links are already producing concrete results. 

According to the prime minister, when the sides agreed in the Washington Declaration to open communication routes — including links between mainland Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave — they assumed Armenia would get a railway connection with the outside world, which, he says, happened earlier than Armenia and the international community expected.

Pashinyan also said bilateral trade between Armenia and Azerbaijan has begun sooner than expected, possibly even earlier than Baku had anticipated, calling it another sign of rapid progress in normalising relations.

By Sabina Mammadli