By Mark Dovich
Armenia is ready to cede to Azerbaijan control of four border villages formerly inhabited by Azerbaijanis in an effort to avert another round of hostilities, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has confirmed.
“Our policy is that we must prevent a (new) war, we must not allow a (new) war to start. And this is also the reason why we have decided to identify the precise border…in these areas,” he said on a visit Monday to the area where those villages are located.
Continuing, Pashinyan said his negotiators had asked Azerbaijan to withdraw from the roughly 83 square miles of territory within Armenia that its troops have occupied since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Azerbaijan has so far refused to do so, and Armenia is now prepared to hand over the villages for nothing in return, he added.
Earlier this month, the head of Azerbaijan’s border negotiating team demanded Armenia “immediately” give up four villages located along the border between Armenia’s northeastern Tavush region and Azerbaijan’s northwestern Gazakh district.
Read more: Azerbaijan demands 4 villages as normalization talks with Armenia stall
At a press conference days later, Pashinyan indicated he is open to handing over villages that belonged to the former Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic but are now under his country’s control, while stressing he will never cede control of any territories located within the former Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Armenian forces took control of the four villages in question during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, forcing their ethnic Azerbaijani residents to flee. The villages are particularly important to Armenia since the main highway to Georgia runs near them, as well as the sole natural gas pipeline from Russia.
As of Tuesday afternoon, no timeline for their handover had been given.
