Members of the opposition in Armenia's parliament said their concerns over negotiations with Azerbaijan on border-delimitation issues were not allayed by government officials during a special session held at their initiative on April 9.
After the 90-minute meeting, Taguhi Tovmasian, a member of the Pativ Unem faction, told reporters that she actually learned "nothing new" on the border-delimitation process.
The pro-government majority in parliament approved holding the meeting with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian behind closed doors.
This prompted Tovmasian to say it took place "under the smokescreen of secrecy" as the government "once again tried to impart some mysteriousness to their actions."
She said the concern was that "after [what happened] to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenian), the Republic of Armenia is in serious danger."
Baku and Yerevan have been conducting negotiations over their respective borders for decades, but the process took on new urgency after Azerbaijan recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh amid a swift military offensive in September 2023.
Unlike in the past, the talks are now being conducted one-on-one without Russian, U.S., or EU mediators.
Mirzoyan said on April 6 that Yerevan and Baku had agreed several times at top-level meetings on recognizing each other's territorial integrity based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, but the Azerbaijanis showed a "reluctance" when it is placed in a draft treaty.
Ishkhan Saghatelian, a member of the Hayastan faction, claimed that the closed-door meeting again showed that "there is no real border delimitation and demarcation work" and "no real Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations."
He claimed "new demands for capitulation" are being presented by Azerbaijan and the current authorities "intend to yield" to them.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his team have repeatedly refuted opposition claims that Yerevan is going to cede any part of the internationally recognized territory of Armenia to Baku.
Mirzoyan and Grigorian did not talk to the media after the session. Grigorian told RFE/RL prior to the meeting that there was still no final decision on starting the delimitation process in Armenia's northeastern Tavush Province.
"The decision to start the delimitation from that part can be made when there is a consensus on the rest of the fundamental issues," he said.
Talks about the start of the border delimitation and demarcation process in Tavush began in March, when Pashinian traveled to the province to meet with residents of local communities situated next to four villages that used to be part of Soviet Azerbaijan but have been under Armenian military control since the 1990s.
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Locals Fear Being Cut Off Amid Armenian-Azerbaijani Peace Talks
Pashinian signaled his readiness to accept Baku's demands for Armenian withdrawal from those villages but did not make their handover conditional on the liberation of any Armenian territory occupied by Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s and 2021-22. He said Azerbaijan would go to war unless Armenia handed those territories back.
The statement prompted strong condemnation from opposition leaders and serious concern from residents of several Tavush villages that would be affected by the withdrawal.
The villagers said they would lose access to their land, have trouble communicating with the rest of the country, and be far more vulnerable to Azerbaijani attacks.
During a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reported by Pashinian's office on April 9, he said that Armenia was ready for solutions "based on the principles agreed on October 6, 2022, in Prague, on May 14 and July 15, 2023, in Brussels, as well as on October 5, 2023, in Granada."
Pashinian has said the principles concern mutual recognition of territorial integrity and borders, border delimitation based on a 1991 declaration signed by a dozen former Soviet republics including Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the sovereign jurisdictions of the states over transportation links passing through their territories.
"Pashinian considered any attempt to distort these principles unacceptable," the statement said.
The closed-door Armenian parliament session came amid heightened tensions at the border with Azerbaijan. The Armenian Defense Ministry released three statements during the day denying Baku's claims that Armenian armed forces had fired at Azerbaijani Army positions.
At the same time, the ministry accused Azerbaijani armed forces of firing at Armenian positions.
The Armenian Interior Ministry reported more damage to a house in the southern village of Tegh as a result of "sporadic gunfire" by Azerbaijani forces.