Global Courant
BRUSSELS – Azerbaijan does not plan to take military action to create a land corridor in southern Armenia, the foreign policy adviser to the President of Azerbaijan said on Tuesday.
Azerbaijan’s military operation last week to take control of the ethnic Armenian-dominated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh has fueled Armenian fears that Baku could now use force to create a corridor through Armenia to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave .
But Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, said Baku only wanted to create transport links to Nakhchivan via Armenia, which he said would benefit both the countries and the wider region.
“Azerbaijan has no military goals or objectives on the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, which is completely outside Azerbaijan’s agenda,” he told Reuters.
“Our suggestion to Armenia is about building connectivity lines, transport lines, in a very peaceful way,” he said in Brussels after EU-hosted talks with his Armenian counterpart, Armen Grigoryan, and European officials.
Hajiyev’s comments came the day after Aliyev held talks with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, in which he hinted at the prospect of creating such a land corridor, which would also give Azerbaijan a direct link to its close ally Turkey.
An influential Telegram channel linked to Karabakh Armenians called “Re:public of Artsakh” said Aliyev’s words looked ominous.
“The new target of Azerbaijan and Turkey is Syunik (a province in southern Armenia through which such a corridor would pass). They already state this openly. Active preparations for war are underway,” the report said.
During the talks in Brussels, officials discussed a possible meeting between Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at a European summit in Granada, Spain, on October 5.
The EU said in a statement after the talks that it “believes that the possible meeting in Granada should be used by both Yerevan and Baku to publicly reiterate their commitment to each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
The Armenian government made no immediate comment on the talks. REUTERS
