News - Armenia PM comments on Azerbaijan demands to hand over 4 Tavush Province villages

During any discussion, there has never been a question and there can be no question about handing over any village of Tavush Province. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated this at his press conference today—and referring to the demands of Azerbaijan to hand over the four villages in Tavush. "When the names of the villages were being raised in the Azerbaijani press, there have never been any villages with such names in the territory of the Republic of Armenia; moreover, not only in Soviet times, but even after that," Pashinyan added. He noted that the Alma Ata declaration of 1991 has become a basis for mutually recognizing the borders and territorial integrity. "The de jure [Armenia-Azerbaijan] border that existed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union was reaffirmed by the Alma Ata declaration and not only by that declaration, but also by the agreements held in Prague on October 6, 2022. The Alma Ata declaration became the basis for mutually recognizing the borders and territorial integrity of each other. Therefore, as a result of those agreements, the former administrative border, which existed during the Soviet Union, is somewhat beyond that administrative border, conditionally it is Azerbaijan, and what is on this side is Armenia. In the process of [border] delimitation, we must work on reproducing that border in any format. We have to proceed from the de jure reality. What is Armenia is Armenia, what is not Armenia is not Armenia," the PM said.