MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. Azerbaijan should recognize the territorial integrity of Armenia, instead of avoiding this step and torpedoing border delimitation, Edmon Marukyan, an ambassador-at-large at the Armenian Foreign Ministry, told TASS.

"Baku occasionally states that Armenia has territorial claims against Azerbaijan. However, as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia [Nikol Pashinyan] said, Yerevan recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. This was put on record during the meeting in Brussels and in the National Assembly of Armenia. However, Azerbaijan continues to refrain from making similar statements on recognizing Armenia's territorial integrity," he said in an interview. "Statements that we are ready to move forward on the basis of recognizing mutual territorial integrity have remained at the level of statements. Azerbaijan should take steps, not torpedo the delimitation process."

Marukyan said Armenia proposed border delimitation and demarcation based on the map of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces dating back to 1975.

"Azerbaijan continues to torpedo this process, does not accept this map and avoids adopting a legal basis," he said.

Marukyan added this is the legal basis that was agreed at the political level on the basis of the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration.

"These are the administrative borders of the USSR, which the CIS member states also recognize as state borders. Our proposal to take the 1975 map as a basis is avoided by Azerbaijan in every possible way," the ambassador continued.

He called Armenia's territorial integrity of 29,800 square kilometers a red line for Yerevan.

Earlier, Pashinyan said that a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan would be possible if both countries recognized each other's territorial integrity. He later said Baku refused to recognize Armenia's territorial integrity.