US Congress' Resolutions Hamper Baku-Yerevan Peace Talks - Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry

US Congress' Resolutions Hamper Baku-Yerevan Peace Talks - Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry

Unilateral resolutions of the US Congress, allegedly based on biased information, harm the peace process between Baku and Yerevan, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said on Monday

BAKU (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd May, 2023) Unilateral resolutions of the US Congress, allegedly based on biased information, harm the peace process between Baku and Yerevan, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

"Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov, who is on a visit to the United States, said at meetings with members of the US Senate ... and House of Representatives ... that unilateral resolutions of the US Congress damage the peace talks between Baku and Yerevan," the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that radical Armenian organizations active in the US are providing members of Congress with "false and unfounded information" about the Lachin crossing point on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border.

Earlier this month, the US expressed concern about the establishment of an Azerbaijani checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor. The State Department resolution said that this move by Baku undermines efforts to build confidence in the peace process.

In late April, Azerbaijan's State Border Service announced that its units had set up a border checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor, the only land route linking Armenia and the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku cited Armenia's alleged illegal use of the road and security threats, noting that the Russian peacekeeping contingent and the Russian-Turkish monitoring center had been informed about this. Yerevan protested Baku's move, stressing that it violated the 2020 trilateral declaration.

The decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in September 2020, marking the worst escalation since the 1990s. Hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered trilateral ceasefire declaration signed in November 2020. The two former Soviet states agreed to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the region. Since then, there have been occasional clashes along the border.