Several trucks and humanitarian workers – including the mayor of Paris – are blocked by Azerbaijani checkpoints. Armenians reject supplies from Azerbaijan.
French politicians tried in vain to send an aid convoy to the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been isolated from Azerbaijan for months. “Our ten trucks with humanitarian aid are blocked”, wrote the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, on Wednesday on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
She and other French regional politicians had to resist in Kornidzor, in the southwest of the Armenian Republic of the Caucasus, where the so-called Lachin Corridor to Nagorno-Karabakh begins.
Almost no food and medicine
According to international law, the area, contested for decades, belongs to Azerbaijan, which wants to place the approximately 120,000 Armenians under its control. Hidalgo called for the road to be opened, which was blocked by an Azerbaijani checkpoint. It was a “total violation of human rights” that no humanitarian aid reached Nagorno-Karabakh. People in the isolated area are desperate because there is almost no food or medicine left.
Neither the EU, nor the US, nor Russia have managed to defuse the crisis between long-distant neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia. French President Emmanuel Macron and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev spoke by phone on Tuesday evening. Aliyev highlighted that the population of Karabakh could also be supplied by Azerbaijan. However, Karabakh Armenians are blocking the road leading out of the Azerbaijani city of Agdam because they fear they will have to accept Baku rule along with food.
The Azerbaijan Red Crescent, a humanitarian organization, is, however, preparing an aid convoy for Nagorno-Karabakh. To show its perspective on the conflict, Baku also invited foreign journalists to accompany this transport. Hidalgo demanded from Macron that France, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, should approve a resolution on the opening of the Lachin corridor. (APA)