In the border standoff between Yerevan and Baku the fuse of a new conflict

Armenia awaits the signing with Azerbaijan of the mutual agreement on territorial integrity. Yerevan fears that the other side may contest other portions of territory after Nagorno-Karabakh. The continued presence of Azerbaijani soldiers in the Armenian area in the remaining undefined swaths. Good intentions (in words) have never resulted in an official signature.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The speaker of the national assembly, the Yerevan Parliament, Alen Simonyan, intervened to state that Armenia is still waiting for Azerbaijan's agreement on the mutual recognition of territorial integrity. A pact that has not yet materialized due to the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh, now concluded with the definitive appropriation by Baku.

According to Simonyan "it is time to reach a stable peace, drawing a red line, according to what we have been proposing for some time: Armenia must be able to count on 29 thousand and 800 square kilometers of territory, and this means that Azerbaijan has 86 thousand and 600, it cannot be otherwise."

The Armenian government of Nikol Pašinyan had long established these terms, accepting Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh, for which a special status of autonomy was requested that Baku had never accepted. Now it is feared that Azerbaijan could compete with Armenia for other slices of territory, while the method of integrating the territory of Artsakh reconquered last month also remains open, with the possible return home of the many refugees still without assistance.

Simonyan recalls that the territorial delineation had been put on the table in various negotiations that took place in various formats, from the three party negotiation with Moscow to meetings with European and US mediators. The President of the European Council Charles Michel himself has repeatedly recalled the territorial dimensions, but the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev has never wanted to officially comment on the matter.

“When we talk about these square kilometres, we are not talking about hypothetical figures or spaces hanging from the sky, but about a concrete territorial area, which concerns two peoples and two real nations”, insists the speaker of the assembly.

He recalls that "there are many specific gestures that can make this dimension effective, from the return of prisoners to the demarcation of borders, and we are waiting for the Azerbaijani president to decide". Yerevan insists on territorial recognition based on the charter of Soviet times, following which the two countries obtained independence.

Simonyan notes that according to those definitions “there are places where Armenians live who have to leave the territory, but Azerbaijanis also have to go elsewhere.” Yerevan is ready to pay the price, as already seen with respect to the very long Nagorno Karabakh dispute, indeed "we have already paid too much", claims the senior representative of the parliamentary majority of the Armenian Civil Agreement party.

Azerbaijan must set up border posts on its territory, and Armenia must do the same, a process that takes time and should start as soon as possible. Simonyan states that "we do not rule out even changing the borders with Turkey, with which relations could improve significantly in the near future". The Armenians do not believe that peace in the region can truly be stabilized as long as the Azeris keep soldiers in Armenian territory in the areas that have remained undefined.

Notes of optimism also resonate in the considerations of the speaker of Parliament, given that "the topic of the Lačin corridor is no longer current, and there are no longer any real objections to the resumption of genuine peace negotiations on both sides". It is hoped that the communication routes will be reopened and trade exchanges will resume in all directions, to revive the economy of Armenia which has been suffering from the events of recent months.

Formally, both Yerevan and Baku declare that they are ready to resolve the issues, but these are declarations repeated several times in recent years without follow-up. And again there is talk of "the end of this year" as the deadline, but experts are rather skeptical. Azerbaijan does not want to grant Armenia a "diplomatic victory" after the defeat of Nagorno Karabakh, and its sights on various locations in the area, such as the city of Sjunik which controls the Lachin/Zangezur corridor, have not faded at all .

The risk of the conflict rekindling is far from over.