The Armenian government made the still unpublicized proposal last fall in response to Baku’s continuing demands for an extraterritorial land corridor that would pass through a key Armenian region.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev continued to accuse Yerevan last month of not complying with a relevant provision of a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh. The clause commits Armenia to opening rail and road links between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan.
The Armenian government maintains that it does not stipulate that people and cargo transported to and from Nakhichevan must be exempt from Armenian border checks. The government has said that it can only agree to “simplified procedures” for Armenian-Azerbaijani border crossings and cargo transit.
In an article published on Monday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Yerevan still “awaits Azerbaijan's positive response” to its proposal. The main thrust of the article was that Azerbaijan may be preparing the ground to attack Armenia.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aykhan Hajizade, denied the claim. He also said that the proposal mentioned by Pashinian has no “practical significance” and leads to “misunderstandings.”
Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonian, who is a key political ally of Pashinian, downplayed Hajizade’s reaction, saying that it does not amount of an official rejection of the Armenian proposal on the transport links.
“As long as they have not said, ‘Sorry, this is not acceptable to us’ let’s that try this option: we are waiting for a reply [from Baku,]” Simonian told journalists.
Aliyev threatened to use force to open the “Zangezur corridor” in televised remarks aired on January 7. He also repeated his multiple preconditions for a peace treaty with Armenia.
Pashinian has since continued to promote Yerevan’s Crossroads of Peace project which stipulates that the two South Caucasus states should have full control of transport infrastructure inside each other’s territory. Aliyev shrugged off the project on January 28, saying that it is “not worth a penny.”
