Grigorian and Mustafayev head commissions on border demarcation and delimitation set up by their governments more than a year ago. The commissions held three joint sessions in the following months, most recently in Brussels last November.
Grigorian proposed another meeting over the weekend following increased ceasefire violations reported from various sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. His office said it should discuss “current contentious issues that are causing tension on the border.”
“The [Azerbaijani] response was positive,” Grigorian told journalists. “We haven’t yet agreed on the venue and date of the meeting, but I presume that we will meet very soon.”
The border demarcation was on the agenda of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s June 1 meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held in Moldova’s capital Chisinau. Pashinian suggested right after those talks that Baku is open to accepting an Armenian proposal to use 1975 Soviet maps as a basis for delimiting the long border. The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, likewise said “progress” was made at Chisinau regarding the use of those maps.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry denied that, however. It emphasized that Azerbaijan has demarcated its borders with other neighboring states “on the basis of analyses and examination of legally binding documents, rather than any specially chosen map.”
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan acknowledged on June 5 that Yerevan and Baku continue to disagree on the key parameters of delimiting and demarcating their border.
Grigorian and Mustafayev also co-chair, together with Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, a trilateral commission tasked with working out practical modalities of planned transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Meeting in Moscow earlier this month, the commission reportedly made major progress on the functioning of a railway that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province.
Overchuk cautioned on Monday that the conflicting sides have still not overcome all of their differences on the issue. Grigorian confirmed that “there is no final consensus yet.”
