Armenia and Azerbaijan have made more progress in ongoing negotiations on the delimitation of their border, the Armenian government said on July 1.
"Negotiations continue constructively," a short statement released by the office of Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian said.
It said that the Armenian and Azerbaijani government commissions on border delimitation have proposed to each other draft regulations for their joint work and should work out a relevant common document "soon."
The two sides had set July 1 as the deadline for reaching agreement on the draft regulation.
The Azerbaijani government issued a statement similar to the Armenian government statement. Neither side elaborated on why the deadline wasn't met or what problems arose in negotiations thus far.
At a think-tank event in Washington on July 1, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he saw a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan as "really within reach."
"There is an extraordinary opportunity potential to realize a peace agreement between the countries," Blinken said in response to a question about the situation in the Caucasus.
The border-delimitation commissions representing the two countries pledged to agree on the regulations by July 1 when they announced on April 19 the start of the delimitation process that took the form of Armenian territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
In the following weeks, Baku gained control of disputed border areas that used to be occupied by four Azerbaijani villages captured by Armenian forces in 1991-92.
For its part, the Azerbaijani Army had occupied at the time large swathes of nearby land belonging to several villages in Armenia’s Tavush Province. It has not withdrawn from that land in return for the Armenian concessions. Baku has also refused to withdraw from Armenian territory seized by its troops in 2021 and 2022.
The land transfer was strongly condemned by the Armenian opposition and sparked angry protests in Tavush border villages seriously affected by it.
The protests were led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, the head of the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. After failing to scuttle preparations for the handover, Galstanian took his campaign to Yerevan, where he held a series of big rallies in May and June in a bid to oust Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
SEE ALSO: Outspoken Armenian Archbishop Leads Another Anti-Government Rally In YerevanPashinian has repeatedly defended his unilateral concessions, saying that they will lay the groundwork for Azerbaijan's recognition of Armenian territorial integrity.
He said that this "positive experience" will be used in the border delimitation and demarcation process that will supposedly be based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration signed by newly independent ex-Soviet republics.
Earlier on July 1, Pashinian refused to answer a question about the process when he was approached by an RFE/RL correspondent in Yerevan.
Grigorian also refused to answer a question on why it was not possible to agree on the regulations according to the established schedule.
The 1991 declaration committed Armenia, Azerbaijan, and other ex-Soviet state to recognizing each other's Soviet-era borders. But it does not contain a detailed description of those borders.
Yerevan until recently insisted that the two South Caucasus states should use Soviet military maps drawn in the 1970s as a basis for the border delimitation. Baku has rejected this.