As the humanitarian crisis in Artsakh worsens, U.S. lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden and his administration to take more concrete steps, yet the State Department seems to just simply be “concerned” about the situation.
With a United Nations emergency Security Council session scheduled for Wednesday to discuss the deteriorating humanitarian crisis, senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., urging her to introduce a resolution calling for an immediate end to Azerbaijan’s eight-month blockade of Artsakh, including allowing unfettered humanitarian access to Armenians there.
“Azerbaijan’s actions are nothing short of an attempt of ethnic cleansing of the Armenian community that has lived there for centuries. Indeed, earlier this month, former Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo issued a report stating that there is “a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed,” Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Padilla said in their letter.
“In your capacity as the President of the UN Security Council for August 2023, we ask that you work with all UNSC members to pressure the Azerbaijani government to lift the blockade and prevent what the evidence suggests is a coordinated effort to ethnically cleanse the people of Nagorno Karabakh,” continued the senators.
In a letter to Biden on Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff called on the president to personally call President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and urge him to end the blockade. He went on to ask Biden to warn the Azerbaijani leader that “there will be consequences, including the implementation of sanctions, visa restrictions, and cutting off U.S. foreign assistance, should the blockade continue.”
As Artsakh officials reported on Tuesday that a 40-year-old man had died of starvation and hunger as a result of the Artsakh blockade, the State Department insisted that “dialogue” was the only avenue through which this crisis can end.
“We have consistently emphasized and reiterated the fact that direct dialogue is essential to resolving this longstanding conflict, and we think that any engagements that ultimately bring peace and stability to the people of South Caucasus would be a good thing and a positive step forward,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
Saying that there will be discussions on the Artsakh matter during the UN Security Council session Wednesday, Patel reiterated that the U.S. remains :deeply concerned about the continued closure of the Lachin corridor, specifically its closure to commercial, humanitarian, and private vehicles.”
“The halting of this kind of humanitarian traffic, in our opinion, worsens the humanitarian situation and it undermines the efforts that have been in place to build confidence in the peace process. And so we urge the Government of Azerbaijan to restore free transit of commercial, humanitarian, and private vehicles through this corridor,” added Patel.