Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee session on Apr. 26
Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin Corridor while at the same time backing Azerbaijan’s dangerous proposal to deliver humanitarian assistance to Artsakh via an alternate road.
The State Department on Wednesday issued a readout of the call, which took place on Friday.
“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on September 1 to express the United States’ concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. He reiterated our call to reopen the Lachin Corridor to humanitarian, commercial, and passenger traffic, while recognizing the importance of additional routes from Azerbaijan. The Secretary underscored the need for a dialogue and compromise and the importance of building confidence between the parties. He pledged continued U.S. support to the peace process,” the U.S. State Department said in the statement.
Blinken traveled to Kyiv, Ukraine on Wednesday and after meeting with the country’s leaders pledged an addition $1 billion in U.S. assistance to the Ukraine war effort, while ignoring what experts are calling a genocide in Artsakh.
While Blinken was meeting with Ukrainian officials, the Congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held an emergency hearing to address the Artsakh crisis.
Rep. Christopher Cox (R-NJ) who was chairing the meeting said the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development did not respond to invitations to send representatives to the hearing.
Testifying at the hearing was the former prosecutor general of the International Criminal Court Jose Luis Ocampo, who in a comprehensive report issued last month said that Azerbaijan and its leaders were perpetrating and committing genocide of the Armenians of Artsakh.
During Wednesday’s hearing Ocampo called into question the U.S.’s strategy of urging negotiations between Artsakh Armenians and Baku.
“In [Nagorno-Karabakh’s] case […] the negotiation is between a GENOCIDAIRE and his victims. You cannot [arrange] a negotiation between Hitler and the people in Auschwitz. You should stop Auschwitz, and then discuss negotiation. [The U.S.] cannot be involved in a negotiation when President Aliyev uses genocide as a method of negotiation,” Ocampo said.
