STRASBOURG, October 17. /TASS/. Yerevan is expecting Baku to formally confirm Azerbaijan’s recognition of Armenia’s territorial integrity within a land area of 29,800 square kilometers and its demarcated borders based of the last maps issued by the USSR Armed Forces General Staff, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
"Armenia recognizes Azerbaijan's territorial integrity within [a land area of] 86,600 square kilometers. But the President of Azerbaijan [Ilham Aliyev] has not responded in kind. He recently said that he recognized Armenia's territorial integrity, but did not specify that he was referring to the 29,800-square-kilometer territory. This has raised concerns among some analysts that he is deliberately maintaining some ambiguity in order to make territorial claims against Armenia," he said. "The agreement on the recognition of territorial integrity with the indication of specific figures was reached precisely for the purpose of ensuring that neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan could resort to any ambiguity," the prime minister pointed out.
Pashinyan added that the border demarcation should be based on the maps of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, pointing out that this was the principle enshrined in the Granada statement.
The Armenian prime minister added that his main political objective is to support efforts to achieve peace in the region. According to him, there was an opportunity for a breakthrough at a meeting in Granada in early October, but Azerbaijan refused to take part in it.
On October 5, a meeting on the normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations was held in Granada, Spain, on the sidelines of the summit of the European Political Community. In addition to Armenia’s Pashinyan, the meeting was attended by European Council President Charles Michel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron. According to the APA news agency, Azerbaijan’s Aliyev refused to attend the meeting, however, ostensibly because of Paris' "unacceptable position." Following the Granada meeting, the participants adopted a joint statement in which Pashinyan reaffirmed Azerbaijan's territorial integrity over a land area of 86,600 square kilometers. Azerbaijan believes that this area includes eight village enclaves located on the territory of Armenia that had been part of the former Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic.