YEREVAN, /ARKA/. In an exclusive interview with the Iranian Tasnim news agency released on Wednesday, Secretary of Armenia’s National Security Council Armen Grigoryan said that Armenia has never discussed, is not discussing and will never discuss anything about a corridor through its sovereign territory.
Grigoryan noted that the issue of unblocking the roads and economic routes of the region was mentioned in the November 10, 2020 trilateral statement, signed by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia to end the war in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, and was also discussed at their meeting on January 11 in Moscow.
“I want to stress that neither of these two statements has a mention of corridor,” he said. “Armenia has never discussed, is not discussing and will not discuss any issue about a corridor,” Grigoryan stressed.
The Secretary of the Security Council noted that he had voiced the position of Yerevan on this issue at the meetings with his colleagues.
“When campaigning for June 20 snap parliamentary elections in the town of Kapan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that there is no corridor and there will not be one through southern Armenia. You know that Pashinyan’s party received the unconditional support of the people, which means that the society also supports us on the issue of the corridor. In other words, this is a public opinion – there will not be a corridor,” Grigoryan said.
At the same time, he noted that Armenia is ready to open roads so that Azerbaijan and Turkey can use them.
“But all these roads will be under the sovereign control of Armenia,” Armen Grigoryan said.
The Azeri president Ilham Aliyev has in the past threatened to use force to establish a corridor through southern Armenia to connect his country with the Autonomous Nakhchivan Republic.
The top Armenian security official stressed that based on previous agreements, the Republic of Azerbaijan can use Armenian territory to connect to Nakhchivan, and Armenia can use Azeri roads and railways to reach central Asia and Russia.