Alen Simonyan: "Yerevan and Baku Want to Sign Peace Agreement by End of Year"; Committee Chairman Refuses
At a press conference on October 26, Alen Simonyan, the Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly, said that Armenia and Azerbaijan indicated a willingness to conclude a peace accord by the end of the year.
"A timeframe desired by both parties, signing a peace treaty before the end of the year, is not a result of an agreement between the parties. Additionally, I hope that a peace accord will be reached as soon as possible," Simonyan added.
He continued by saying that Azerbaijani soldiers must leave Armenia's sovereign land and that the territorial integrity of Armenia is not up for negotiation.
Committee Chairman Refuses
On October 27, Andranik Kocharyan, the head of the Armenian Parliamentary Committee on Military and Security Matters and a member of the ruling Civic Contract party, said that the process of delineating and subsequently demarcating the Armenian-Azerbaijani boundary could not be finished by the end of the year.
"You know, we have such a problem with another neighbor [supposedly Georgia], and it has been going on for decades, but the process has begun, and time limitations shouldn't be an issue," he added. The MP said that Armenia and Azerbaijan must concur that the process is drawn out and unhurried because if time constraints are imposed, the process will not advance. "The most important thing is having a paper on internationally recognized boundaries on the table so that we can settle delimitation and demarcation issues within its framework," Kocharyan stated.
Kocharyan emphasized, "While delimitation and demarcation issues are connected to the peace treaty, they do not need to be settled concurrently."