WASHINGTON, April 23. /TASS/. Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor undermines efforts toward peaceful settlement, Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the US Department of State Vedant Patel said in a statement on Sunday.
"The United States is deeply concerned that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor undermines efforts to establish confidence in the peace process. We reiterate that there should be free and open movement of people and commerce on the Lachin corridor and call on the parties to resume peace talks and refrain from provocations and hostile actions along the border," he stressed.
The Azerbaijani State Border Service said earlier in the day that it had established a checkpoint on the border with Armenia at the beginning of the road linking Lachin and Khankendi (known as Stepanakert in Armenia). The Armenian foreign ministry slammed the move as a flagrant violation of the 2020 trilateral statement, saying that Azerbaijan is seeking to unleash ethnic purges in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union’s break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs - Russia, France and the United States.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. Under the agreement, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the positions that they had held and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the engagement line in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor that connects Armenia with the enclave to exercise control of the ceasefire observance. Apart from that, a number of districts came over to Baku’s control.
Later, the three leaders adopted several more joint statements on the situation in the region. Last year, Azerbaijan and Armenia began to discuss a peace treaty.