Pashinian pointed at the weekend to Aliyev’s continuing use of the phrase “Zangezur corridor” with regard to a special transit route for Azerbaijan which he pledged to open during the August 8 summit in Washington hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump.
A joint declaration signed by the three leaders at the White House says that Armenia will give the United States exclusive rights to a road, a railway and possibly energy supply lines that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through a key Armenian region. They would be part of a transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
Although key practical modalities of this arrangement remain unknown, Pashinian’s domestic critics say that it would lead to the kind of an extraterritorial “Zangezur corridor” that has been sought by Azerbaijan ever since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Pashinian and other Armenian officials have denied this.
Aliyev again echoed the Armenian opposition claims in a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday. He said that the TRIPP will give Azerbaijan “unhindered passage through the Zangezur corridor.” Pashinian objected to the term when he addressed the assembly two days later.
“There is no such phrase in the documents agreed upon in Washington … I think it makes sense for my Azerbaijani counterpart to clarify what he means by using that expression because in the Armenian reality it is perceived as a territorial claim from Armenia and is associated with conflict talk,” he said.
“I draw the international community’s attention to the fact that the so-called ‘Zangezur Corridor’ and similar talk do not stem from the agreements reached, have nothing to do with the agreements, have an irritating and negative impact, and are perceived as a territorial claim against a sovereign country, contrary to the agreements reached and declared,” added the Armenian premier.
In Yerevan, opposition leaders seized upon Pashinian’s complaints, saying that they make mockery of his claims about the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and Armenian control of the TRIPP.
“In effect, Nikol Pashinian publicly admitted from the UN podium the failure of the so-called Washington ‘agreements’ and his peace agenda,” said Ishkhan Saghatelian, the top leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun).
“How dare they continue to tell the public the fairy tale about ‘established peace’ after all this?” he wrote on Facebook.
“Nikol’s speech at the UN was reminiscent of the confession of a deceived teenager begging for help,” scoffed Eduard Sharmazanov of the former ruling Republican Party.
Despite his complaints, Pashinian again touted an Armenian-Azerbaijani treaty initialed in Washington and insisted that “peace has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” Baku continues to make the signing of the treaty conditional on a change of the Armenian constitution.
Pashinian’s political opponents maintain that the treaty will not preclude a future Azerbaijani military against Armenian even if it is signed. They say that his appeasement policy only encourages Aliyev to demand more concessions from Yerevan.
