YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia‘s authorities on Friday called on the country’s worldwide allies to place stress on Azerbaijan after accusing it of finishing up a three-day blockade of humanitarian help to Nagorno-Karabakh.
The accusations mark one other flashpoint within the tense relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan which have fought over the breakaway area for many years.
The Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister, Vahan Kostanyan, accused Azerbaijan of blocking the so-called Lachin Corridor and demanded worldwide allies step in to permit 19 vans with 400 tons of humanitarian help to go. According to Armenian authorities, the vans have been caught there for the reason that night of July 26.
“The additional pressure of our international partners on Baku is very important. We have heard statements from our various colleagues, but we don’t think this is enough,” he mentioned.
Kostanyan beforehand additionally accused Azerbaijan of ignoring a ruling by the International Court of Justice ordering Azerbaijan authorities to make sure unimpeded motion within the Lachin Corridor, the one highway from Armenia into Nagorno-Karabakh.
The ongoing dispute over the highway has impeded meals provides to the area and aggravated tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have fought two wars for the reason that finish of Soviet rule.
Nagorno-Karabakh had substantial autonomy below the Soviet Union and got here below management of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian navy in 1994 on the finish of years of separatist combating. Armenian forces additionally took sizable territory surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh itself.
In 2020, Azerbaijan regained most of that surrounding territory and items of Nagorno-Karabakh itself in a battle which killed about 6,800 troopers. Under a Russia-brokered armistice, transit alongside the Lachin Corridor was to proceed below the assure of Russian peacekeepers.
According to Armenian media, vans and international diplomats are at present within the village of Kornidzor on Armenia’s border with Nagorno-Karabakh, which is at one finish of the Lachin Corridor.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry mentioned that it seen Armenia’s try and ship a convoy to Nagorno-Karabakh “under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’” as a violation of Azerbaijan’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty.” Azerbaijan additionally accuses Armenia of smuggling weapons into Nagorno-Karabakh.
The newest flare-up comes weeks following talks in Brussels and Washington aimed toward calming tensions between the 2 nations after Azerbaijan opened a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor in April. At that time, the highway had already been blocked for 4 months by demonstrators who had been protesting what they claimed to be unlawful mining and different ecological abuses by Armenians within the space.
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