YEREVAN. July 20 (Interfax) - Azerbaijan refuses to hold talks on establishing a demilitarized zone and troop withdrawals based on the maps used by the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan has said.
"One of the most important issues in these negotiations relates to the mutual recognition of the existing interstate borders. According to the Almaty Declaration of 1991, the administrative borders of the former Soviet Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan were recognized as interstate borders," Mirzoyan said at a special meeting held at Armenia's request by the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday.
Armenia favors a clear-cut border in order to "avoid any future territorial claims and exclude the possibility of use of force for materializing those claims," he said.
"We propose to recognize as the basis for the delimitation of the state border the most recent existing maps. [We also propose] to create a demilitarized zone on the borderline between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Our suggestion is to relocate the forces to the borderline defined in the 1975 USSR General Staff maps and start discussions on modalities of the mentioned demilitarized zone or the distancing of forces," Mirzoyan said.
"Unfortunately, the Azerbaijani side is still hesitant to engage in these discussions, and the proposal of the Armenian side on mechanisms which was provided to Azerbaijan in written form more than a year ago has not been even considered.," he said.