“We have hope and confidence that the peace process will move in a positive direction, and we assess the overall dynamics that we see after the meeting in Washington on August 8 as positive,” Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian told reporters.
Kostanian’s comments contrast with Yerevan’s and Baku’s differing interpretations of one of the agreements brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump. It commits Armenia to opening a U.S.-administered corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev again described it on Tuesday as an extraterritorial “Zangezur corridor,” ignoring Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s objections repeated at their fresh meeting held last week. Addressing the UN General Assembly late last month, Pashinian said the term used by Aliyev it runs counter to the August 8 agreement and is “perceived as a territorial claim” in Armenia.
“There is and there can be no project called ‘Zangezur corridor’ in the territory of the Republic of Armenia,” Kostanian said in this regard. “What the Azerbaijani authorities will call the communication projects passing through their territory is their problem.”
Aliyev and other Azerbaijani officials have clearly referred to the transit route that would pass through Armenia’s Syunik province and along its border with Iran. Armenian opposition leaders have cited these statements to back up their claims that Pashinian has agreed to open the kind of a land corridor that has been sought by Baku ever since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Former President Robert Kocharian, who also leads the main opposition Hayastan alliance, claimed on Tuesday that this transit arrangement means Armenia would effectively give up control of the Armenian-Iranian border and gain nothing in return.
Pashinian’s August 8 talks with Aliyev and Trump also resulted in the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Although Aliyev continues to make its signing conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution, Pashinian has repeatedly said that “peace has been established” between the two South Caucasus nations. His political opponents maintain that even if the treaty is signed it will not preclude more Azerbaijani attacks on Armenian border areas.
