Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian said they include the mechanism for delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and practical modalities of opening it for travel and cargo shipments.
“We believe that the delimitation of the border between the two countries must be the cornerstone of a possible document on the normalization of relations,” he told journalists.
Yerevan insists on using 1975 Soviet military maps as a basis for the delimitation process. European Union head Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz effectively backed this stance in a joint a statement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian issued after their October 5 meeting in Granada, Spain.
Azerbaijan made clear afterwards that it continues to reject the idea and wants the Armenian side to unilaterally withdraw from “eight Azerbaijani villages” occupied in the early 1990s.
Armenian officials and observers believe that Baku is reluctant to sign a peace deal that would require it to cede Armenian territory seized three decades ago and after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, and preclude Azerbaijani territorial claims to Armenia. Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Karabakh raised more fears in Yerevan that it may also invade Armenia to open a land corridor to the Nakhichevan exclave.
The Granada statement voiced the European leaders’ “unwavering support” for Armenia’s territorial integrity and called for “regional connectivity links based on full respect of countries’ sovereignty and jurisdiction, as well as on the principles of equality and reciprocity.”
In Kostanian’s words, the Armenian government believes that these principles should also be incorporated into the peace treaty along with a “clear mechanism for the settlement of disputes.”
“These are the issues on which the two sides still need to bring their positioners closer to each other,” said the official.
Pashinian hoped to meet Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at Granada and sign a document laying out the main parameters of the peace treaty. However, Aliyev withdrew from the talks at the last minute. He also appears to have cancelled another meeting which Michel planned to host in Brussels later in October.
Kostanian said that there is no agreement yet on the date and venue of the next Aliyev-Pashinian meeting.
“The mediators are working on organizing a new meeting,” he added, pointing to U.S. special envoy Louis Bono’s talks with Armenian leaders held on Wednesday.
Some members of Pashinian’s political team have said that the peace deal may still be signed before the end of this year.