Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Friday said that the Armenian authorities are not negotiating with Azerbaijan regarding a potential handover of villages in the Tavush Province.
“No official of the Republic of Armenia has the right to conduct negotiations regarding the handing over of any village, not only in the Tavush province but also in any other province of Armenian territory,” emphasized Mirzoyan, when speaking to parliament’s Standing Committee of Foreign Relations.
“No one can hand over villages from Tavush Province to any other country,” said Mirzoyan.
“This is a self-evident truth. There are guarantees within which the legal mechanisms operate. Therefore, we are not conducting negotiations on the handover of Tavush villages,” Mirzoyan said.
He explained why the Alma-Ata Declaration has become the basis of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace negotiations. This document, signed in 1991, committed newly independent ex-Soviet republics to recognizing their Soviet-era borders.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the four villages that are being claimed by Baku as being “occupied by Armenia,” with demand for their immediate “liberation,” are not “de jure” part of Armenia, according to the Alma Ata document.
“We have chosen the Declaration of Alma-Ata because it is the first and main document where Azerbaijan and Armenia mutually recognized each other’s territorial integrity based on the 1991 borders,’’ Mirzoyan explained.
“The process of mutual recognition of territorial integrity and subsequent border delimitation must be based on the Almaty declaration,” he said, referring to a 1991 document.
“There is more mutual understanding on this issue now then, for example, a month ago,” added Mirzoyan. “At least at the moment, I have the impression that we are very close to reaching a mutual agreement on this issue.”
