Speaking at a cabinet session in Yerevan on Thursday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian again slammed Azerbaijan for fueling tensions in the region by setting up a checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.
He stressed that the move made by Baku on April 23 was against the Moscow-brokered agreement that put an end to a six-week Armenian-Azerbaijani war in November 2020. Under the deal signed by the leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers were deployed in the region, including along a five-kilometer-wide corridor linking it with Armenia.
Supplies to Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia were already severely restricted in December when a group of government-backed Azerbaijani activists blocked the road at a junction just off Stepanakert.
“If until recently the Lachin Corridor was closed under the pretext of a pseudo environmental protest, it has now been officially closed by Azerbaijan,” Pashinian said, claiming that Azerbaijan’s “provocative step” is aimed at “aggravating the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Pashinian praised the international community for what he described as a “clear assessment” of Azerbaijan’s installation of a checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor, but stressed that Azerbaijan’s ulterior motives included committing “ethnic cleansing and genocide” of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians and that “this should be in the center of our and international community’s attention.”
In their reactions to the Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor the United States, France and other Western powers have voiced their concerns that it could fuel further tensions and undermine peace efforts between Yerevan and Baku.
Russia also described Azerbaijan’s “unilateral step” as “unacceptable.” It appointed a new commander of its peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh on April 26, three days after Azerbaijan set up the checkpoint, but officially provided no reason for the replacement.
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov said that the checkpoint was set up in response to “safety concerns in light of Armenia’s continued misuse of the road for the transport of weapons and other illegal activities.”
Authorities in Baku brush aside accusations from the Armenian side, insisting that when installing the border checkpoint, they acted on its sovereign territory.
“Any interference by the Armenian side in the issue of [Azerbaijan’s] opening a border checkpoint on its sovereign territory, which is an internal affair of Azerbaijan, is an encroachment on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and is contrary to the obligations assumed by Armenia in Prague and Sochi, as well as to all norms and principles of international law,” Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday, reacting to Pashinian’s remarks.
Earlier, Azerbaijan pledged that “necessary conditions” will be created for “a transparent and orderly passage of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan” in both directions and that the control mechanism will be carried out in cooperation with Russian peacekeepers.
The Armenian leader, meanwhile, stressed today that under the terms of the Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement it is only the Russian peacekeepers who must control the Lachin Corridor and Azerbaijan must not obstruct free movement along the corridor.
Speaking about the rights and security of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, Pashinian stressed that they should become “a subject of negotiations between Stepanakert and Baku in an international format.”
“As for a possible peace accord between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it is clear that it should have a precise and effective system of mechanisms of guarantees of implementation and settling disputes,” Pashinian said.
“There should be a clear fixation of parameters for border delimitation, and clear mechanisms of excluding any escalation should be put in place,” he added.
Pashinian pledged that Armenia will continue to make efforts to prevent a further escalation of the situation and reach a comprehensive settlement, but said that the need for a broader international presence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor is becoming increasingly urgent.
“Azerbaijan’s efforts to turn Nagorno-Karabakh into a new scaffold for Armenians must be stopped, and the only reliable way of doing that is the presence of representatives having a broad international mandate in Nagorno-Karabakh. As the first step it is necessary that an urgent international fact-finding mission be sent to Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin Corridor,” the Armenian leader concluded.