Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Thursday announced Azerbaijan’s delivery of a series of proposals for a peace agreement, while again denouncing restrictions imposed by Baku on the Lachin corridor, which connects Armenia with the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic.
«Armenia has handed over to Azerbaijan its proposals on a peace treaty and we are ready to sign it with that content. I hope that Azerbaijan’s reaction will also be positive,» he said, before stressing that Yerevan already submitted proposals months ago on the border delimitation work and the composition of the border security commission.
Thus, he detailed that «Armenia handed over to Azerbaijan proposals on reopening of regional connections and is ready to move towards immediate solution of the problem on that way». «Our position remains the same. Azerbaijan must end its occupation of sovereign territories of Armenia and must withdraw its troops from the sovereign territory of Armenia,» he stressed.
In this regard, he has warned that «the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh remains very tense because of the illegal Azeri blockade of the Lachin corridor», Armenian news agency Armenpress has reported. «Hundreds of families are still separated due to the fact that they were in different parts of the blockade against their will. There are shortages of essential goods, including food, in Nagorno-Karabakh,» he noted.
The Armenian prime minister also criticized the actions of the troops deployed by Russia to ensure peace in the area and argued that «this is happening as a result of Azerbaijan’s illegal actions, but that does not change because the task of the Russian peacekeeping contingent is not to allow these illegalities to pass and, particularly, to keep the Lachin corridor under control.»
Hours earlier, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had called on Azerbaijan to «take measures within its jurisdiction to ensure the safe passage through the Lachin corridor of seriously ill patients in need of medical treatment in Armenia and other persons stranded on the road without shelter and means of subsistence.»
The court has argued that «the extent to which the Government of Azerbaijan currently controls the situation in the Lachin corridor is disputed and unclear,» before stating that Baku «rejects the allegations» of Armenia about the blockade and insists that the corridor «is under the control of Russian peacekeeping troops.»
The Azeri authorities decided to blockade the area and suspend gas supplies, according to Armenia, so the local authorities – which began to stockpile fuel to avoid a major crisis in the face of the blockade – asked the population to use cars only when necessary, giving priority to ambulances and minimum services.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have had several clashes in recent years over the control of Nagorno Karabakh, a territory with a majority Armenian population which has been the focus of conflict since it decided to separate in 1988 from the region of Azerbaijan integrated into the Soviet Union.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
