Our opposition colleagues’ discussions are somewhat absurd, because when Prime Minister Pashinyan doesn’t talk about the return of our occupied territories for three days, they say: “Why isn’t he talking about it?” When he says we must return our occupied territories, including Artsvashen, they say: “What is this? So, he will make concessions.” Vice speaker Ruben Rubinyan of Armenia’s National Assembly (NA) on Tuesday told this to reporters in the NA.

“As for the enclave issues, they must be decided within the framework of the work of the border delimitation commissions [of Armenia and Azerbaijan]. The border delimitation commissions have adopted rules of procedure. It assumes that they must put legal bases to each other, discuss [them], put the cartographic, legal bases they have for various sections, and so on. They must carry out border delimitation and, at the end, sign the border delimitation protocols. At the very end, when they complete the border delimitation process, they must sign an agreement with each other regarding border delimitation. This definitely will not happen before the [parliamentary] elections [in Armenia next June], because it is a long work.

The border delimitation process enables to carry out exchanging of territories. But if, for example, no exchange of territories takes place, there is no requirement for a referendum.

If during the process it is decided to exchange certain territories, in that case it is done by referendum.

At the moment there is no news on these issues; that is, there has been no meeting of the border delimitation commission lately, and there are no new developments,” the NA vice speaker added.