Azerbaijan’s violating Lachin Corridor obligation raises questions over its capacity to contract, Pashinyan says

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Azerbaijan is “grossly” violating its direct obligation under the truce agreement signed in November 2020 by closing the Lachin Corridor, and this causes serious questions regarding its “capacity to contract”.

Slamming the Baku administration of attempting to misattribute the conduct of not fulfilling its own obligations to Armenia, Pashinyan said Azerbaijan’s narrative is completely made up.

“It is also important to note that different arguments are being brought forward on the closure of the Lachin Corridor, but I believe that the deepest and real reason is that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh continue to live in their homeland and the international community began to record more and more clearly Azerbaijan’s visible policy of subjecting the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing and genocide,” Pashinyan said during a cabinet meeting on Thursday, ArmenPress reported.

Since Dec.12, the Azerbaijani government-sponsored protesters defining themselves as environmental activists have blocked the Lachin Corridor, claiming that Armenians in Karabakh were illegally mining the gold and copper reserves in nearby mines. The blockage halted the movement of people and goods in or out of the enclave, including food, fuel, and medical supplies, resulting in shortages of the products.

“We expect more substantive steps from the international community, including from the UN Security Council-member Russian Federation, whose peacekeeping contingent is deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh and whose direct obligation under the Nov.9, 2020 statement is to keep the Lachin Corridor under control,” Pashinyan said.

Russia has a peacekeeping force in the region, deployed under the truce agreement signed by Azerbaijan and Armenia in November 2020 following a six-week long fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“I have to emphasize that the continuous blockade of Lachin Corridor makes it even more necessary to deploy an international fact-finding mission to Nagorno-Karabakh and Lachin Corridor and it is necessary to make continuous efforts in this direction,” Armenian premier said.