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Pashinian Accused Of Agreeing To Azeri Corridor Through Armenia


Armenia - Dashnaktsutyun party leader Ishkhan Saghatelian speaks during a news conference in Yerevan, June 13, 2023.
Armenia - Dashnaktsutyun party leader Ishkhan Saghatelian speaks during a news conference in Yerevan, June 13, 2023.

Armenian opposition leaders have accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of planning to open an extraterritorial land corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s strategic Syunik province in yet another concession to Baku.

Pashinian acknowledged on Wednesday that he is ready to accept a U.S. proposal to outsource control over the movement of people and cargo through that road and railway to an American company. He said that under the proposed arrangement “intensively” discussed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani travelers would have no physical contact with Armenian border and customs officers.

Baku has said all along that they must be exempt from Armenian border controls. Yerevan has rejected these demands until now, insisting on full Armenian control of the transit route.

“Pashinian effectively confirmed that he agrees to provide a corridor through Syunik to Azerbaijan (they were denying that until now),” said Ishkhan Saghatelian, a leader of the opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun). “A corridor where Armenia's sovereignty and jurisdiction will be limited.”

In a social media post made on Wednesday night, Saghatelian claimed that the third-party control of the transport links is a smokescreen for covering up the fact that Azerbaijan and Turkey are the “sole and main beneficiary of the project.” He said that Dashnaktsutyun, which is a key component of the main opposition Hayastan alliance, will strive to prevent that “together with our people.”

“We will do everything in our power to thwart the plan to turn Armenia into a Turkish vilayet (province),” added the head of the pan-Armenian party’s governing body in Armenia.

“These discussions are not about unblocking Armenia and expanding Armenia's economic capabilities,” Anna Grigorian, a parliament deputy from Hayastan, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday. “They are about once again satisfying Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s demands.”

Pashinian insisted that the “outsourcing” of the Syunik corridor would not undermine Armenia’s territorial integrity or sovereignty. He likened it to foreign companies’ long-running management of his country’s main international airport as well as water supply and railway networks.

His critics shrugged off that comparison. They argued, in particular, that people arriving in at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport run by an Argentinian company have to go through Armenian border and customs checks.

Artur Khachatrian, another opposition lawmaker, described the parallels drawn by Pashinian as “charlatanism.” Pashinian should stop “presenting the surrender of our sovereignty as a simple commercial transaction,” he said.

Edmon Marukian, a former Pashinian ally leading the opposition Bright Armenia Party, similarly suggested that the premier is considering opening the extraterritorial corridor to Nakhichevan demanded by Baku and Ankara. Marukian claimed that Pashinian is ready to make such a concession in return for the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal which he would use for trying to win the next general elections expected in June 2026.

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