Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (Photo: AFP).
Speaking at a meeting with residents of Voskepar village in the Tavush region bordering Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said, "we need to work quickly to demarcate the border with neighboring Azerbaijan to avoid a new round of conflict."
"Armenia's refusal to demarcate the border could trigger a new confrontation. That means a war could break out over the weekend," the leader warned.
He noted that the border demarcation should be based on mutual recognition of the territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan based on the former Soviet map from 1991, when both were part of the Soviet Union.
Prime Minister Pashinyan also stressed Armenia's intention to strengthen close ties with the West when he hosted NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on March 19.
"We want to continue and develop the existing political dialogue and expand our partnership with NATO and some of its members," Prime Minister Pashinyan said, adding that Yerevan would welcome NATO's efforts to help normalize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "We expect strong support from the international community, including NATO, for the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan."
There is currently no information about Azerbaijan's reaction to Prime Minister Pashinyan's statement. Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on March 17 that Azerbaijan "is in the active phase of peace negotiations with Armenia".
Azerbaijan stressed that Armenia's return of land is a necessary precondition for a peace deal to end the conflict over the territory.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have a long history of territorial disputes. The Tavush region is close to a series of abandoned Azerbaijani villages that Armenia has controlled since the start of the conflict in the early 1990s between the two countries.
Last year, Azerbaijan launched a lightning military operation to reclaim the Nagorno-Karabakh region, ending three decades of control by ethnic Armenian separatists there.
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