YEREVAN, APRIL 30, ARMENPRESS. The Vice-Chairman of the National Assembly of Armenia, Ruben Rubinyan, announced that prior the agreement on delimitation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan wanted Armenia and Azerbaijan not to have any clear border. Azerbaijan preferred a blurred border, where the stronger party could exercise its rights, Ruben Rubinyan said in the parliament, addressing the criticisms of the opposition.

Rubinyan stressed that Azerbaijan had been attempting to retract from the agreement to acknowledge each other's territorial integrity and to conduct delimitation and demarcation based on the Alma-Ata Declaration for months.

"After months of negotiations, in April, an agreement was reached and a protocol was signed in which both parties reaffirmed that the Alma-Ata Declaration would serve as the basis for the delimitation," stated Rubinyan.

This implies that the administrative borders that existed between the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSRs at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that is, as of 1991, will be restored.

“ Why was Azerbaijan trying to avoid this? The answer is as follows: Azerbaijan wanted Armenia and Azerbaijan not to have any border, so that  the stronger party could exercise its rights.

The following logic was considered:  each country borders  are there where its army can assert control," said the Vice President of the National Assembly.

According to him, the parliamentary opposition has undertaken the task of legitimizing that logic, which he finds strange. Rubinyan believes that the opposition presenting a draft statement to the National Assembly, suggests that the 1993 contact line should serve as the basis for delimitation, it implies that the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan should not be delimited based on documents and maps with legal justification but on a contact line.

"And the line of contact itself means a line that was formed as a result of the following: Each country could stand wherever it was able to, that is, again, the right of force was used.

You legitimize the right to force. When force begins to act, your allies will not fulfill their obligations, and what has happened many times will happen," Rubinyan addressed the opposition.