YEREVAN. – There should be a neutral zone on both sides where contact will be excluded, especially between the residents and the servicemen of the opposing side. Deputy director of the National Security Service (NSS), Stepan Melkonyan, on Thursday told this to reporters in the National Assembly of Armenia.

"How can we say it is safe if all that is still in progress, we do not have demarcation, we do not have delimitation, we do not have a treaty on the border? Naturally, to say that 'all incidents are prevented and will be prevented' is a fantasy. That is why a service is being carried out to prevent such things," he said, adding that each country carries out a one-kilometer layer of that neutral zone at the expense of its own territory.

"It is natural that in these conditions, the residents may have worries," the deputy director of the NSS emphasized in particular.

According to Melkonyan, the Armenian and Azerbaijani troops are positioned not only in the Syunik Province sector, but in the whole boundary. "The boundary has not been finalized yet. Today we have a 520km boundary where we are just positioned. Once the military-political situation calms down, there will be an opportunity to set up a bilateral commission, to make this issue a subject of discussion, then we will approach demarcation, delimitation, and our border, border engineering structures will be clearer," he added.

Asked whether he sees grounds for such a thing, Stepan Melkonyan responded: "No one can say that now because it is not one-sided; it depends also on the behavior of our neighbors."

The deputy director of the NSS informed that there is a commission, which operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, and studies the issues of border delimitation.