Azerbaijan slams Armenia for attempts to evade commitments on Zangezur corridor

By Burc Eruygur

ANKARA (AA) – Azerbaijan on Monday criticized Armenia for its attempts to avoid commitments to open the Zangezur corridor.

"Armenia should put an end to false excuses to evade its commitments to link the Zangezur corridor and roads/railways, according to the tripartite declaration signed in November 2020,” the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It also noted that ignoring previous negotiations between the two countries and proposing three “unrealistic” checkpoint options to connect Azerbaijan to its western exclave Nakhchivan is “not a good policy.”

The statement came in response to a post shared by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Twitter on the opening of three checkpoints on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border.

The two former Soviet republics have had tense relations since 1991, when Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Upper Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

The Zangezur region was part of Azerbaijan, though the Soviets gave it to Armenia in the 1920s, leaving Azerbaijan deprived of its direct overland route to Nakhchivan.

For the corridor, Azerbaijan has focused on planned connections including motorways and a 43-kilometer (26.7-mile) railway.

On Friday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that Armenia struck a heavy blow to the settlement of bilateral relations with Baku during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Uzbekistan last month.