MOSCOW: According to Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev, Azerbaijan’s border service has taken control of four villages in the Gazakh district on the Armenian border as part of an agreement reached with Yerevan.
The territory returned to Azerbaijan under a border delimitation agreement on Friday measured 6.5 square kilometres (2.5 square miles), according to Mustafayev.
Armenia announced in April that it would return the uninhabited villages to Azerbaijan, which both sides hailed as a significant step towards a peace treaty between Yerevan and Baku, which has been at odds for over 30 years.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s decision to hand over the four villages has sparked protests at home, with demonstrators calling for his resignation over what they see as a betrayal.
Pashinyan, in a speech to the nation late Friday, described in detail how Armenians had long sought a homeland within a specific geographic area, and how demarcating national borders was part of that process.
He stated that all Armenians should act “so that a sovereign and democratic Armenia with demarcated borders becomes a national ideology and concept.”
Azerbaijan’s forceful retaking of the entire Nagorno-Karabakh region in September last year, which sparked an exodus of ethnic Armenians living there, dealt a painful blow.
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