Representatives of the Hayastan and Pativ Unem factions wanted that the meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian, who conducts negotiations on border issues with his Azerbaijani counterpart, be public. But, citing a possible disclosure of state secrets, Parliament Speaker Alen Simonian insisted that the discussions proceed behind closed doors – a decision eventually approved by the parliament’s pro-government majority.
As a result, nine out of 35 opposition lawmakers were not allowed to attend the session due to having no access to classified information.
After the closed-door session that lasted for an hour and a half member of the Pativ Unem faction Taguhi Tovmasian told reporters that they actually learned “nothing new” on the border delimitation process.
“Under the smokescreen of secrecy the government once again tried to impart some mysteriousness to their actions. They said nothing reassuring. Our initial concerns have only grown stronger. That’s it. The concerns are that after Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh – ed.] the Republic of Armenia is in serious danger,” Tovmasian said.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, a member of the Hayastan faction, claimed that the meeting again showed to the opposition that “there is no real border delimitation and demarcation work” and “there are no real Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations.”
“There are new demands for capitulation being presented by Azerbaijan to Armenia that the current authorities intend to yield to,” he said.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his political teammates have repeatedly refuted opposition claims that Yerevan is going to cede any part of the internationally recognized territory of the Republic of Armenia to Baku.
Mirzoyan and Grigorian did not talk to the media after the session. Prior to the meeting Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that there was still no final decision on starting the delimitation process in Armenia’s northeastern Tavush province.
“The decision to start the delimitation from that part can be made when there is a consensus on the rest of the fundamental issues,” he said.
Talks about the start of the border delimitation and demarcation process in Tavush began in March when Prime Minister Pashinian traveled to this northeastern province to meet with residents of local communities situated next to four formerly Azeri-populated villages that used to be part of Soviet Azerbaijan but have been under Armenian military control since the 1990s.
Pashinian signaled his readiness to accept Baku’s demands for Armenian withdrawal from those villages, but did not make their handover conditional on the liberation of any Armenian territory occupied by Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s and 2021-2022. He said Azerbaijan would go to war unless Armenia handed those territories back.
The statement prompted strong condemnation from opposition leaders and serious concern from residents of several Tavush villages that would be affected by the withdrawal. The villagers said they would lose access to their land, have trouble communicating with the rest of the country and be far more vulnerable from Azerbaijani armed attacks.
During a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reported by his office today Pashinian said that Armenia was ready for solutions “based on the principles agreed on October 6, 2022 in Prague, May 14 and July 15, 2023 in Brussels, as well as October 5, 2023 in Granada.”
In his earlier public remarks Pashinian would spell those key principles out, saying that they concerned mutual recognition of territorial integrity and borders, border delimitation based on a 1991 declaration signed by a dozen former Soviet republics, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, after the collapse of the USSR, and the sovereign jurisdictions of the states over transportation links passing through their territories.
“Pashinian considered any attempt to distort these principles unacceptable,” the readout of the phone call released by the Armenian side said.
The discussions in the Armenian parliament today came amid heightened tensions at the border with Azerbaijan. The Armenian Defense Ministry released three statements during the day denying Baku’s claims that Armenian armed forces had fired at Azerbaijani army positions at the border. At the same time, the Armenian ministry accused Azerbaijani armed forces of firing at Armenian positions. Meanwhile, the Armenian Interior Ministry today reported more damage to a house in the southern village of Tegh as a result of “sporadic gunfire” by Azerbaijani forces.
