Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday that the situation in the Tegh village section since March 31, which was caused parallel with the deployment of Armenian and Azerbaijani border guards, requires a thorough investigation.
“Regarding the situation in the section of Tegh village since March 31, I think the situation requires a thorough investigation, including in terms of assessing our actions regarding taking the mentioned part of the state border under protection from the beginning” the Prime Minister said.
Pashinyan described Azerbaijan’s action in the area as “provocative” and said that Azerbaijan contradicts the 6 October 2022 Prague and 31 October 2022 Sochi statements.
Armenia welcomes the EU’s statement calling on Armenia and Azerbaijan to respect the 1991 line in absence of delimited border and is ready to withdraw its forces to a safe distance from this line, as proposed by the EU, Pashinyan added.
“In terms of a political assessment of the border situation, I think the statement made by the EU yesterday is important, which emphasized the 1991 line. It is the administrative borderline that existed between the Armenian SSR and Azerbaijani SSR, which went on to become the state border under the 21 December 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration. This line must be respected, the EU statement noted. It emphasizes the need to withdraw the forces of either side to safe distances from this line as a reliable guarantee for stability of the situation. Armenia is ready to take such measure along the entire Armenia-Azerbaijan 1991 borderline. We’ve been expressing our readiness over this issue since 2021. Such actions stem from the logic of the quadrilateral Prague agreements and trilateral Sochi agreements”, Pashinyan said at the Government sitting.
The Armenian Prime Minister warned that Azerbaijan’s destructive approach hinders such solution. He said that Azerbaijan is systematically displaying its conduct of non-fulfilling international agreements. “It does so in the issue of releasing prisoners of war, maintaining the ceasefire and the issue of non-use of force or threat of force, around which there is a written agreement reached in Sochi, and it does so over its illegal blockade of Lachin Corridor”, Pashinyan said.
