Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry on Friday accused the United States Acting Under Secretary of State Yuri Kim of engaging in a smear campaign against Baku after she testified at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Artsakh on Thursday.
During her testimony at the hearing, entitled “Assessing the Crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh,” presided over by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Robert Menendez, senators heard Kim and asked questions regarding the urgent steps, if any, the U.S. is taking to thwart a genocide of Armenians by Azerbaijan and its president, Ilham Aliyev.
“The Lachin corridor must open now. Other routes can be opened too, but Lachin must be opened, that’s non negotiable,” Kim said during the hearing referring to Azerbaijan’s now nine-month-long blockade of Artsakh.
“We view the status quo as completely unacceptable. We will not stop working until we reach a resolution. We have consistently said that that corridor must be opened to commercial, humanitarian and private traffic. We’ve conveyed that message both publicly and privately to all levels of the government of Azerbaijan on numerous occasions. Access to food, medicine, baby formula and energy should never be held hostage,” she added.
She also said that the U.S. will not tolerate the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Artsakh.
“The United States will not tolerate any action – short-term or long-term – to ethnically cleanse or commit any other atrocities against the Armenian people of Nagorno Karabakh. The current humanitarian situation is not acceptable. Humanitarian access through the Lachin corridor and other routes must be available now. We will do everything possible to make that happen and we look forward to continuing to work to make that happen,” Kim stated, however, not referring to Azerbaijan as the perpetrator of what many experts have called a genocide in progress.
In his statement on Friday, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesperson Aykhan Hajizada said that statements made by Kim do not reflect“the current situation and realities in the post-conflict situation in the region” and “contain elements of Armenia’s worldwide smear campaign against Azerbaijan.”
Hajizada added that the view expressed by Kim contradicts the agreement on the simultaneous use of the Akna (Aghdam)-Stepanakert and Lachin-Stepanakert roads, which was allegedly reached between President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on September 1.
Artsakh authorities on Thursday said that Azerbaijan has reneged on its pledge of opening the two roads and continues to keep Artsakh under a blockade.
“Non-observance of this agreement, which is also intended to be implemented through the mediation of the US side, by Armenia and the so-called regime created by it, and groundless claims on the ‘blockade and humanitarian situation’ are well-known to the US,” Hajizada added.
