Armenia and Azerbaijan begin demarcation of their common border

This is an important step for Armenia and Azerbaijan after decades of adversity and clashes over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The two Caucasian countries announced on Tuesday April 23 that they had started the delimitation of their common border. The Azerbaijani Interior Ministry explained that expert groups were carrying out the “clarification of coordinates on the basis of a geodetic survey of the terrain”. His Armenian counterpart confirmed “boundary work” of the border, excluding “the transfer of any part of the sovereign territory of Armenia”.

Yerevan and Baku are “closer than ever” of a peace agreement, for his part rejoiced the Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev. The two states regularly call for a peace treaty resolving these territorial disputes, but the talks remain very difficult and slow. Regular armed incidents also remind us of the extent of tensions between the two countries.

“Avoid a new war”

Last month, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian agreed to a request from Azerbaijan to return four border villages seized by Yerevan’s forces during a war in the 1990s, which forced their Azerbaijani residents to flee . The decision sparked protests in a border region of hundreds of Armenians, who fear their isolation and that some of their homes could end up under Baku’s control.

Last week, these two former federated republics of the USSR announced their intention to demarcate their border on the basis of maps dating from the Soviet era. Nikol Pashinian insisted on the need to resolve border disputes in order to“avoid a new war”. He called the border demarcation efforts “significant change on the ground”because these rival countries “now have a border and no longer a line of contact, which is a sign of peace”.