Armenia-Azerbaijan Talks In Washington To Last ‘A Few Days’

The phone calls came amid heightened tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan after Baku on April 23 set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s roadblock tightened what was already an effective blockade of the region by government-backed Azerbaijani protesters since December.

According to a spokesperson in Washington, during his April 30 phone call with Aliyev Blinken also “expressed the United States’ deep concern that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor undermines efforts to establish confidence in the peace process, and emphasized the importance of reopening the Lachin corridor to commercial and private vehicles as soon as possible.”

According to his press office, Pashinyan also raised the issue of the Lachin corridor in his phone call with Blinken. In particular, he reportedly emphasized that “the steps taken by the Azerbaijani side in the Lachin corridor are aimed at the consistent implementation of its policy of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and the complete eviction of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The Armenian prime minister also “emphasized the importance of the adequate response of the international community to Azerbaijan’s actions, which undermine regional security, and taking active steps towards the unconditional implementation of the order of the International Court of Justice.”

The Hague-based court ruled on February 22 that the Azerbaijani government must “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin corridor in both directions.”

Azerbaijan Issues Preconditions

Before the meeting, Armenia responded to a number of preconditions Azerbaijan had set forth for achieving normalization between the two countries, stating that Baku’s policies “do not contribute to reducing tensions and establishing peace in the region.”

Azerbaijan’s permanent representative to the United Nations recently advanced as many as eight preconditions to Armenia, including the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian withdrawal from eight occupied Azerbaijani villages and Armenia’s refusal to have territorial claims to Azerbaijan.

In written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service regarding these preconditions a spokesperson for Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “far-fetched narratives and demands of the Azerbaijani side are changing day by day, and not only for the Republic of Armenia, but, we think, also for the entire international community, it is already difficult to follow the speculations of the Azerbaijani side.”

Ani Badalyan said that the armed forces of Armenia served only in the sovereign territory of the republic. She stressed that the defense forces in Nagorno-Karabakh were made up of local ethnic Armenians.

“It is known that since the 1990s, in order to protect themselves against the aggression carried out by Azerbaijan and prevent mass violence against the civilian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenians of Karabakh formed the Defense Army, which still carries out its service in order to prevent the implementation of the mentioned operations planned by Azerbaijan decades ago,” she said.

“The Defense Army was and remains relevant only because of the ethnic cleansing policy pursued by Azerbaijan, including physical and psychological intimidation of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, murders, periodic violations of the ceasefire, blocking of the Lachin Corridor, interruptions in the supply of food and medicine to Nagorno-Karabakh, disruptions in natural gas and electricity supply,” the representative of Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs added.

Commenting on Azerbaijan’s claim regarding “eight Azerbaijani villages occupied by Armenia,” Badalyan reminded that still back in the 1990s Azerbaijan occupied the Armenian village of Artsvashen, the arable lands of the villages of Vazashen and Aygeovit in the Tavush region and 70 percent of the arable land of the villages of Berkaber and Paravakar. She said that after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, as a result of renewed aggression, Azerbaijan occupied another 150 square kilometers of sovereign Armenian territory.

“It is surprising that about the occupation of territories by Armenia speak officials of a country, the top leadership of which openly makes claims regarding the sovereign territories of Armenia, sometimes also stating that there is no border between Armenia and Azerbaijan and therefore it is not violated as a result of the advancement of their armed forces. The president of Azerbaijan has repeatedly openly admitted the occupation of the territories of the Republic of Armenia, threatening to seize new territories through the use of force if his maximalist demands are not met,” she said.

The spokesperson of the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also noted that Armenia’s calls to Azerbaijan to respect the border recognized by both countries in the Alma-Ata Declaration adopted by former Soviet republics amid disintegration of the USSR in 1991, as well as to provide legal justifications for claims regarding some of the mentioned villages remained unanswered.

“Moreover, the proposal of the Armenian side on a mirror withdrawal of troops from the 1975 border, which would definitely help to reduce border tensions and solve a number of existing problems, also remained unanswered,” she added.

The representative of the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stressed Azerbaijan’s “changing narrative” on the situation with the blocking of the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.