News - Border delimitation commissions’ meetings can be held both in Armenia and Azerbaijan and at border

At its Cabinet session Thursday, the Armenian government approved the procedure for organizing and holding the sessions and joint working meetings between the bilateral commissions on delimitation of the state border and border security between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Ara Mkrtchyan, the Deputy Minister of Justice of Armenia who presented the draft of the aforesaid procedure, said that as a result of the adoption of this procedure, the members of the aforementioned commissions will be able to create the basis for the development of border delimitation and demarcation processes, their legal and technical aspects, in order to develop and sign a relevant document regarding the national border between the two countries. "The time, date, and place of holding the sessions are determined by agreement between the chairmen of the commissions. As a rule, the sessions are held consecutively in the territories of Armenia and Azerbaijan, or on the border of the two countries, or in the territory of third countries, as well as in the format of a videoconference. If they are held in the territory of one of the countries, the host side creates all the conditions for it, including guarantees the safety of the participants", emphasized the deputy minister of justice of Armenia. In turn, Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan said that this document currently regulates organizational matters and how the two sides will interact. "At the next phase, we have to develop another regulation, we will discuss [it] again, then we will give [it] the appearance of a legal act, which already will be more substantive because with it, we already have to describe the methodology and give definitions to what we mean by the definition of a map, which is extremely important, and what we mean by a document with legal significance. I believe [that] after agreeing on that methodology, we will continue the work with concrete documents and the format of discussion of topographic maps," explained Grigoryan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, for his part, said that the Azerbaijani side should also approve such a decision. "For the first time, the borer delimitation process is being put on an institutional basis; this is very important. This is not a secret document, it will be public," Pashinyan said. The Armenian premier added that the respective work needs to be intensified and try to make progress.