Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian implied last month that he and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made serious progress on the thorny issue during their talks held in Abu Dhabi on July 10. In that regard, Pashinian said he is ready to accept a U.S. proposal to let an American company administer rail and road traffic through the would-be corridor.
Aliyev reiterated afterwards that the transit of people and cargo must be exempt from Armenian border controls. He warned Yerevan against continuing to oppose the so-called “Zangezur corridor” sought by him. Pashinian rejected those demands through a spokeswoman.
Hasmik Hakobian, a parliament deputy from Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, downplayed the lingering differences between Baku and Yerevan on which Armenian officials have made conflicting statements in recent weeks.
“I fanatically believe that we will achieve the goals that we initially set for ourselves because we have invested a lot of effort in this and we will definitely achieve those most important goals: to have peace, to have open borders, and naturally, that will be followed by economic development,” she said.
Armenian opposition leaders claim that Pashinian has already agreed to open an extraterritorial corridor to Nakhichevan through Armenia’s strategic Syunik province. They say that even outsourcing its management to a U.S. company would undermine Armenian sovereignty over the province bordering Iran.
The Azerbaijani demands for the corridor are also strongly backed by Turkey. A senior Turkish diplomat said on Thursday that it is important for not only Azerbaijan and Turkey but also other Turkic states.
Hakobian said in this regard that Ankara’s and Yerevan’s positions on Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links “have coincided in many cases.” But she did not give concrete examples of that.