During a video-conference discussion on Thursday Nagorno-Karabakh’s Foreign Minister Sergey Ghazarian, in particular, explained why Stepanakert rejects humanitarian aid through the Agdam road.
“Azerbaijan clearly wants that connection between Armenia and the Republic of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh – ed.] be cut by blocking the Lachin Corridor. And secondly, no international aid should degrade human dignity, therefore, if Azerbaijan created such a difficult situation itself, deliberately dooming more than 120,000 of our compatriots to starvation, this is simply unacceptable, these false attempts to present themselves with humanitarian approaches are unacceptable,” Ghazarian said.
The Karabakh official emphasized that this was not only the position of the Karabakh authorities, but also of the region’s ordinary residents.
Speaking about the results of the emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh that was held at Armenia’s request on August 16, Ghazarian stressed that it was only the beginning of the process.
Summarizing the discussions in New York, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Thursday that the very fact of the closure of the Lachin Corridor was highlighted at the UN Security Council, which he called the highest international instance.
Officials in Baku, meanwhile, claimed that the outcome of the meeting was more in favor of Azerbaijan as many representatives mentioned the possibility of Karabakh Armenians’ using alternative routes of supply.
Commenting on this, Ghazarian said: “We are concerned that a number of countries have attempted to establish some kind of equality between the Lachin Corridor and other roads, transport links, which is unacceptable and does not correspond to the parameters of the Lachin Corridor established by the November 9, 2020 document.”
Ghazarian, however, expressed a hope that the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was “only the beginning” and that “this process will continue.”
Stepanakert and Yerevan accuse Azerbaijan of violating the terms of the Moscow-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement by closing the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, which has led to severe shortages of food, medicines and fuel in the predominantly Armenian-populated region.
They also charge that Azerbaijan’s actions amount to a policy of ethnic cleansings and expect a resolution from the UN Security Council to unblock the Lachin Corridor.
Baku denies blockading Nagorno-Karabakh or carrying out any policy of ethnic cleansings in relation to the region’s Armenian population.