12:23,

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 11, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani customs checkpoint is not in the territory of Armenia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the Cabinet meeting today, commenting on yesterday’s decision of Azerbaijan that it is going to set up a customs checkpoint in the problematic section of the Goris-Kapan road.

“In order to avoid speculations, I would like to remind and draw your attention to the fact that the Azerbaijani checkpoint is not in the territory of the Republic of Armenia. The talk is about the Eyvazli section. Now question can arise whether it wasn’t possible to negotiate so that no border control was exercised on the cargo and the citizens of Armenia. It was possible, but the cost would be the corridor logic, which is unacceptable for us”, the PM said.

He said that Armenia’s position over the regional communications has been that they must be unblocked without any exterritorial context and customs and passport control.

“In other words, we haven’t discussed and will not discuss any corridor logic as I have stated repeatedly in the past. This is fixed in the Armenia-Russia-Azerbaijan deputy prime ministerial format and it’s important to note that this logic and agreement have been publicly confirmed also by the Russian Federation in the past weeks. Perhaps Azerbaijan made its yesterday’s decision in this context”, Pashinyan said.

He clarified that Armenia remains committed to the provisions of the 2020 November 9 and the 2021 January 11 statements, in particular those concerning the unblocking of all transportation and economic communications of the region.

“Moreover, we are interested in the unblocking of all economic and transportation communications of the region and hope to achieve concrete solutions in the future based on the principles agreed upon and announced in the trilateral working group”, he said.

He informed that Armenia as well will set up customs checkpoints as needed.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan