Armenia’s Foreign Ministry reported the agreement on Thursday following a fresh joint meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions dealing with the delimitation process.
The ministry said that the process will start from the northernmost section of the 1,000-kilometer-long frontier and then continue “in the southern direction,” towards Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s borders with Iran. It gave no other details.
The office of Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian, who heads the Armenian commission, also declined to shed more light on the planned border delimitation and, in particular, the future of several enclaves inside Armenia which were controlled by Azerbaijan in Soviet times and occupied by the Armenian army in the early 1990s.
The Azerbaijani side seized at the time a bigger Armenian enclave as well as large swathes of agricultural land belonging to border communities in Armenia’s northern Tavush province. It occupied more Armenian territory during border clashes in 2021 and 2022.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan last week seemed to dismiss opposition speculation that Baku will demand the unilateral handover of the former Azerbaijani enclaves. All but one of them are adjacent to the Tavush section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Hasmik Hakobian, a pro-government parliamentarian, likewise said on Friday that the two sides have not yet made any decisions on the question of enclaves. “This should be discussed separately,” she said.
Tigran Abrahamian, a senior lawmaker from the opposition Pativ Unem alliance, insisted, however, that the agreed sequence of the border sections subject to delimitation suggests that Yerevan is prepared for a unilateral handover of those border areas. He claimed that this would be part of further concessions to Baku which were signaled by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian last week in response to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s fresh threats of military action against Armenia.
“The gas pipeline entering Armenia from Georgia passes through Tavush and, in particular, the areas where that [border delimitation] work is due to start,” Abrahamian told RFE/RL/s Armenian Service.
The pipeline carries Russian natural gas that meets more than 80 percent of Armenia’s needs. One of Armenia’s two main highways leading to the Georgian border also passes through those areas.
Garnik Danielian, another opposition lawmaker, claimed that Pashinian has already agreed to make more territorial concessions.
“As a result of all this, the enemy will take control of the Yerevan-Tbilisi interstate highway in several sections, again creating serious challenges in terms of strategy and security,” he wrote on Facebook.
Danielian urged Armenian opposition supporters to “get ready for resistance to another homeland surrender.”
Pashinian’s government controversially ceded four other disputed border areas in Tavush to Azerbaijan last spring, sparking massive anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan. Protest leaders backed by the Armenian opposition said that it will encourage Baku to demand further Armenian concessions without ceding anything in return.