By Shoghik Galstian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Just days after the latest round of talks on delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Azerbaijan demanded over the weekend that Armenia immediately and unconditionally withdraw from four border villages.
The office of Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev, who led the Azerbaijani delegation in the March 6 talks, said that “there is no doubt about their belonging to Azerbaijan.”
The ruined villages are among eight border areas, most of them enclaves inside Armenia, which were controlled by Azerbaijan in Soviet times and occupied by the Armenian army in the early 1990s. For its part, the Azerbaijani side seized at the time a bigger Armenian enclave as well as large swathes of agricultural land belonging to this and several other border communities of Armenia. It occupied more Armenian territory during border clashes in 2021 and 2022.
The Armenian government says that a total of 200 square kilometers of Armenia’s internationally recognized territory adjacent to 31 Armenian communities is now controlled by Azerbaijan. It says that it is ready, in principle, to consider swapping the former Azerbaijani enclaves for those lands or seek other compromise solutions.
Reaffirming Baku’s position on the issue, Mustafayev’s office claimed that Azerbaijan never occupied any Armenian territory. It said that the “immediate liberation” of the four villages must take place before the two sides start delimiting and demarcating their border. The delimitation process must result in Armenian withdrawal from the four other disputed areas, he said.
