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YEREVAN, Armenia — Azerbaijan has agreed to reopen the one freeway linking Armenia to the breakaway area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a senior Azerbaijani official advised POLITICO on Saturday.
The information comes after authorities within the ethnic Armenian-controlled exclave — inside Azerbaijan’s internationally acknowledged borders — introduced earlier within the day that it will settle for humanitarian shipments from the Russian Crimson Cross by way of another highway from Aghdam, inside Azerbaijani government-held territory.
In accordance with Hikmet Hajiyev, international coverage adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, “Azerbaijan expressed its consent as a goodwill gesture to make sure simultaneous opening” of the so-called Lachin Hall for ICRC cargo. The highway connects the mountainous territory to Armenia. The acceptance, he mentioned, would pave the best way for a separate deal to permit passage from Armenia. “Within the Lachin checkpoint, Azerbaijan’s customs and border regime should be noticed,” he mentioned.
For shut to 2 months, help organizations together with the Crimson Cross have mentioned they’ve been unable to move provides of meals and gasoline into Nagorno-Karabakh, regardless of a 2020 ceasefire settlement between the 2 sides guaranteeing free use of the highway beneath the supervision of Russian peacekeepers. With important provisions working low, native Armenians say a humanitarian disaster is already unfolding and the previous chief prosecutor of the Worldwide Prison Court docket, Luis Moreno Ocampo, final month issued a report warning {that a} “genocide” was beneath approach.
Each the U.S. and the EU have urged Azerbaijan to reopen the Lachin Hall. The South Caucasus nation denies it’s orchestrating a blockade, and has insisted the Karabakh Armenians should settle for humanitarian provides from inside Azerbaijan.
Arayik Harutyunyan, the previous de facto president of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, advised POLITICO in July that he would refuse to simply accept the provides regardless of a deteriorating humanitarian state of affairs as a result of “Azerbaijan created this disaster and can’t be the answer to it.”
Harutyunyan, who resigned final month amid the continuing disaster, was due to get replaced on Saturday in a presidential election. Nevertheless, in response to Hajiyev, the “sham elections” are a “critical setback and counterproductive” for the state of affairs.
As a substitute, he reiterated a name from the Azerbaijani authorities for the Karabakh Armenians to put down their arms and settle for being ruled as a part of Azerbaijan. “It’s the solely method to an enduring peace the place Armenian and Azerbaijani residents of Karabakh can stay and coexist,” he mentioned.
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