Monitoring Desk
TBILISI: Moscow said on Tuesday it was working hard to resolve a dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Lachin Corridor, the road connecting Armenia to the Armenian-populated area of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The mountainous road across Azerbaijan has been blocked since Dec. 12, when protesters claiming to be climate activists stopped traffic by setting up tents. Some 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh depend on it for supplies of fuel, food, and medicine.
The standstill has raised worldwide concern, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on Monday to immediately reopen the route.
Moscow is the main power broker in the region and has peacekeeping forces stationed along the Lachin corridor. Their failure to reopen the route is a source of a hindrance for Armenia.
Moscow
Moscow “continues painstaking and hard work with both Azerbaijan and Armenia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told media persons when asked to comment on US Secretary of States’ statement. However, the spokesperson did not elaborate.
Armenia claims the protest was organized by the government of Azerbaijan as a deliberate blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, Azerbaijan rejects that, adding the activists are staging a valid protest against illegal mining activity in the area.
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The two sides have fought two wars since the 1991 over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by Armenians.
