“The wounds are fresh, both on our side and theirs,” he told journalists. “Didn’t we also kill people? Didn’t people also die on the Azerbaijani side? It’s about face-to-face contact [on the border] … During this sensitive period of rebuilding relationships and trust, the goal is to minimize that contact.”
Asked why Armenia is not demanding the same procedure for its own transit through Azerbaijani territory, Simonian said: “Because Azerbaijan also has very big wounds, Azerbaijan reckons that ... Armenia kept 20 percent of their country under occupation for 30 years and goes as far as to make statements about genocide. This is their way of thinking, and it is obvious that it is very important for Azerbaijan to prevent any possible future threat.”
Aliyev said in late July that “Azerbaijani cargo and Azerbaijani citizens should not see the faces of Armenian border guards” during their transit through Armenia’s Syunik province. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s spokeswoman rejected the demand at the time as a “hidden territorial claim against Armenia.”
However, Pashinian went on to sign on August 8 a joint declaration with Aliyev in Washington which calls for “unhindered communication” between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan through Syunik. During the talks hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, he also pledged to give the United States exclusive rights to the transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
Although crucial details of this transit arrangement remain unknown, Armenian opposition leaders maintain that it amounts to the kind of an extraterritorial “Zangezur corridor” that has been sought by Azerbaijan ever since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinian and other Armenian officials have denied this.
Pashinian again insisted on Wednesday that the documents signed by him in Washington uphold Armenian sovereignty over Syunik. Still, he indicated that modern technology would be used to exclude physical contact between Armenian border and customs officers and Azerbaijani travelers.
Armenian opposition lawmakers said Pashinian’s statement only proved their claims. One of them, Artur Khachatrian, on Thursday accused the government of deliberately withholding details of the corridor deal with Baku and Washington.
“Unhindered communication means that any road, any gate is open,” said Khachatrian. “But when I cross a border, a border guard there can turn me away. That’s the question: can we block [Azerbaijanis?] They don’t answer it because if they go into details they will get the following reaction, ‘Wait a minute, you had told us a different thing.’”