Armenia: No legal basis any Azerbaijani enclave ever existed in Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia’s Ambassador at-large Edmon Marukyan has said there is no legal ground that any de-jure Azerbaijani enclave has ever existed in the territory of Armenia.

Marukyan's remarks came on Tuesday, May 10, after Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov said that enclaves in the territory of Armenia will be returned to Baku.

"We’ve said on numerous occasions that the delimitation and demarcation processes should take place based on facts and documents of legal significance. At this moment we don’t possess any legal substantiation that any de-jure Azerbaijani enclave has ever existed in the territory of Armenia," Marukyan was quoted as saying by Armenpress.

"On the contrary, there are legal grounds on the village of Artsvashen belonging to Armenia. The same applies to a number of territories belonging to Armenia, including in the Sotk-Khoznavar section where the infamous unlawful Azerbaijani military invasion took place last year in May. These issues must certainly be discussed and resolved in the delimitation and demarcation process."

Marukyan also weighed in on statements coming from Azerbaijan, according to which Armenia has agreed to launch negotiations on a peace treaty with Azerbaijan based on a 5-point proposal sent by Azerbaijan.

The envoy recalled a Մarch 21 statement from Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, who said that there was nothing unacceptable for Yerevan in the proposal.

"It is another matter that these proposals do not address all issues of the Armenia-Azerbaijan comprehensive peace agenda. We supplemented the agenda with our response handed over to the OSCE MG Co-Chairmanship and therefore we are ready for the launch of the peace talks based on this,” Marukyan said.

Azerbaijan in mid-March disclosed the contents of its single-page proposal on normalization of relations with Armenia, which contains five "principles", including "the mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of international borders and political independence of each other." Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan said on May 5 that one of the clauses of the Armenian side's response is that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be resolved in order to have a comprehensive peace agreement.