“Regarding the [French minister’s] claims that Azerbaijan keeps the Lachin road ‘under siege’, as a result of which ‘Armenian residents are facing a serious humanitarian crisis’, we remind you once again that it is absurd to present as a blockade the operation of a border checkpoint set up in accordance with the obligation of Azerbaijan to guarantee the safety of citizens, vehicles and cargoes on the Lachin road, as well as to prevent its misuse by Armenia for military and illegal economic purposes,” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry repeated the offer to provide aid to ethnic Armenians via Agdam, an Azerbaijani-controlled town east of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
“Also, the French side is well aware that if the Armenian residents really need daily necessities, then the Azerbaijani side has proposed the Agdam-Khankendi (Stepanakert) road and other alternative ways for that,” the Azerbaijani ministry said.
In her telephone conversation with Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, Catherine Colonna, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, in particular, said that Azerbaijan’s actions contradict the obligations that it undertook under the terms of the ceasefire agreement and harm the negotiation process.
Colonna also reportedly gave assurances about the willingness of France to support the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, and also announced that France intends to make an additional allocation of 3 million euros for the activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the region.
Earlier on Tuesday Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry summoned a Spanish charge d’affaires over Madrid’s official announcement of aid to ethnic Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh. It said that the decision announced in a post on the X (formerly Twitter) account of Spain’s embassy in Russia amounted to supporting “the separatist regime established by Armenia on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan.”