Yerevan believes that negotiations with Baku on the regulation of the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, are unacceptable as the current trilateral agreements of November 2020 have already settled the issue, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Wednesday .
YEREVAN (UrduPoint / Sputnik News – February 22, 2023) Yerevan believes that negotiations with Baku on the regulation of the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, are unacceptable as the current trilateral agreements of November 2020 are already settled the issue. . , Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Wednesday.
On February 18, after the trilateral meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Munich, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told journalists that Baku offered to establish checkpoints at both ends of the Zangezur corridor � negotiated between Yerevan and Baku to connect the western regions of Azerbaijan and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic � and on the border between the Lachin area and Armenia. -
“A similar idea was voiced to establish checkpoints on the Armenian border and in the area where the Lachin corridor starts. But our answer is unequivocal and was already announced shortly after the siege of the Lachin corridor: the regulation of the Lachin corridor is being discussed . and secured by signatures, including those of the Azerbaijani president I am talking about the document November 9, 2020. The resumption of negotiations on the regulation of the Lachin corridor, by force or threat of force is unacceptable to us and cannot be is an acceptable answer,” said Mirzoyan in a joint press conference with the Luxembourg Foreign Minister, Jean Asselborn.
Mirzoyan noted that there is an “expectation from Azerbaijan” to open the Lachin corridor in exchange for a similar corridor.
However, according to the Armenian minister, even before the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated in the fall of 2020, the Lachin corridor was treated as a humanitarian corridor throughout the negotiation process, given that “Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh were surrounded by Azerbaijan and is the only road that connects them to Armenia and the world.”
“I mean, the corridor has been important since the beginning. In terms of unblocking the transport communications in the region, our position remains the same and constructive. We can unblock them quickly if we ensure that all communications, including railways, operate within the region. the sovereignty of the countries where they pass,” Mirzoyan added.
Since December 12, the Lachin corridor, which runs through the Lachin district of Azerbaijan to connect Armenia to the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, has been blocked by a group of people from Azerbaijan described by Baku as environmental activists protesting alleged illegal Armenian mining in the area.
Pashinyan has repeatedly said that the blockade of the corridor violates the cease-fire declaration arranged by Russia between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2020. The document delegated control of the Lachin corridor to Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh. At the end of December 2022, Pashinyan claimed that the peacekeepers did not fulfill their obligations, a claim denied by Moscow.