Armenia’s Foreign Ministry reported the agreement last week 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 border and then continue “in the southern direction.” 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.
All but one of the Armenian-controlled enclaves are adjacent to the Tavush section of the frontier. A key Armenian highway leading to the Georgian border passes through one of them.
Speaking during the government’s question-and-answer session in the Armenian parliament, an opposition parliamentarian, Garnik Danielian, asked Grigorian to clarify whether Azerbaijan will gain control a section of that highway as a result of the upcoming border delimitation. The vice-premier did not give a clear answer.
“There is a statement on the last [Armenian-Azerbaijani] meeting reflecting what we agreed on,” he said. “If what you are saying is not in that agreement, then there is no such agreement.”
Prime Minister Nikol 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. Danielian last week urged opposition supporters to “get ready for resistance” to such concessions which he said are planned by Pashinian.
Artur Khachatrian, another lawmaker representing the opposition Hayastan alliance, challenged Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan to explain why Yerevan did not insist on starting the delimitation process from the south: namely, Armenia’s strategic Syunik province. Khachatrian argued that delineating those border sections would deter Baku from invading Syunik to open a land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave and require Azerbaijani forces to withdraw from Armenian territory seized in 2021 and 2022. Mirzoyan replied vaguely that the two sides agreed otherwise.
“We are interested in the continuation of the delimitation process,” he said. “We regard it as a very important element of the peace process.”