YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — The Armenian government indicated on Monday, July 21, that it still disagrees with Baku on some practical modalities of a transport corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rejected through a spokeswoman Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s fresh demands for the transit of people and cargo to be exempt from Armenian border controls.
Pashinyan implied last week that he and Aliyev made serious progress on the thorny issue during their talks held in Abu Dhabi on July 10. In that regard, he said he is ready to accept a U.S. proposal to let an American company administer rail and road traffic through the would-be corridor.
“Azerbaijani cargo and Azerbaijani citizens should not see the faces of Armenian border guards or anyone else,” Aliyev said at the weekend. “There should be no physical contact, there should be guaranteed security measures so that our people and cargo can pass freely.”
He said he reiterated this demand at Abu Dhabi and warned Yerevan against continuing to oppose the so-called “Zangezur corridor” sought by him.
“If they continue to block this process in the future, they will find themselves in not only transport isolation but also, to some extent, political isolation,” Aliyev told a group of foreign journalists during an event in Nagorno-Karabakh.
