By Hrach Melkumian and Ruzanna Stepanian
MOSCOW (Azatutyun) — Citing an unnamed state official, Russia’s leading daily, Kommersant, wrote on Friday, August 11, that Moscow had proposed ending the current situation with the blocked access to Nagorno-Karabakh by opening both the Agdam and Lachin roads.
The paper said the arrangement that both the Azerbaijani and Karabakh sides had almost agreed to eventually did not go through, however.
According to the official “familiar with the regional situation”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed opening the Agdam road first, through which Red Cross vehicles would deliver what was necessary to Nagorno-Karabakh, and a day later, according to Moscow’s proposal, the Lachin road would be opened.
“Such an option was brought to a high level of preparation,” said the unnamed official who spoke to Kommersant.
But, according to him, the Karabakh Armenians first set a condition that Lachin should be opened not one day later, but simultaneously and then demanded that Azerbaijani goods should not be delivered through Agdam. The paper writes that then a scandal related to Azerbaijan’s detention of a Karabakh resident at a checkpoint in the Lachin corridor on charges of war crimes allegedly committed during the early 1990s emerged and “the compromise did not happen.”
