ArmInfo. The territory of Azerbaijan, with an area of 86.6 thousand square kilometers, also includes the so-called enclaves. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan state at a press conference in Yerevan. Minutes ago, he mentioned that 86.6 thousand km also includes Nagorno Karabakh.
<29,800 sq. km includes Artsvashen as well, and according to these calculations, 86,600 sq. km. also includes enclaves. This is a political position, and the legal part of the issue still needs to be considered>, the prime minister noted.
According to him, the issue of recognition of each other's territorial integrity is considered in the package. As for the enclaves, there are several options, and perhaps after the signing of the peace agreement there will be an exchange of territories along the remaining "line" of the demarcated border, with an accuracy of about 1 kilometer.
Azerbaijani enclaves in Armenia are located in the Tavush and Ararat regions. These are the villages of Baghanis-Ayrum, Nerkin Voskepar (Ashagi Askipara) and Verin Voskepar (Yukhari Askipara), Barkhudarly, Sofulu, and Tigranashen (Kyarki) These settlements passed to Armenia as a result of the war in the 1990s, during the first Karabakh war. The village of Artsvashen, in turn, came under the control of Baku.
Many Armenian experts have repeatedly warned about the danger of enclave exchange between Armenia and Azerbaijan from a strategic point of view, since when exchanging enclaves, we will have serious problems with interstate roads. In particular, we are talking about an enclave in the Ararat region (Tigranashen), where the M2 interstate highway passes, connecting the south and north of the country and Armenia with Iran, and two more are in the Tavush region. The same situation is in the north-east, in Tavush region, in a very difficult winding area with two former enclaves. There is an interstate highway connecting Armenia to Georgia through Ijevan, Noyemberyan, and Bagratashen.
Meanwhile, Artsvashen, which is slightly smaller than the total area of the three enclaves in its territory, does not occupy any strategic area, on the contrary, it is completely surrounded by Azerbaijani territory.