Pashinyan offers Armenia and Azerbaijan to outsource border, customs services for each other’s citizens in unblocking

YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 30, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan commented on a question regarding the unblocking of connections in the region.

In an interview with Public Television, addressing Russian Deputy PM Alexey Overchuk’s statement that the negotiations of the trilateral task force has never included and can’t include anything on any extraterritorial corridor violating sovereignty of any party, the PM said that he fully agrees with Overchuk and there is nothing in his statement that he would like to proofread.

The PM said this issue would’ve been long solved if Azerbaijan hadn’t continuously made aggressive statements showing that despite the working group’s content Azerbaijan is trying to put territorial claims against Armenia. “What is this narrative about the corridor? Also the Western Zangezur narrative, if there is Eastern Zangezur, it means there is also Western Zangezur, that kind of narrative is this?” Pashinyan said.

He cited the November 9 trilateral statement’s 9th clause.

“Not only are we ready, but we also want this very much. In order for our desire to be clearly expressed, we also have a name for the project, the Armenian Crossroad project. We are doing this to show that we consider this work important, our own. There must be consent over legal procedures of commissioning the roads. There is principled consent that the roads will function under the sovereignty of the countries through which they pass. This means that border control must be in place at the border, and customs control. And there is the disclosure of these mechanisms, on how to conduct passport control and customs control,” the PM said.

Pashinyan said Azerbaijan doesn’t present any objections around this on the working level. However, there are nuances.

‘For example, Azerbaijan says since there is an acute conflict situation they don’t want their citizens to deal with Armenian border guards or customs officers while crossing the border into Armenia. And we tell them that we don’t want it too, given the conflict situation we don’t want the Armenian citizens to encounter an Azerbaijani border guard or customs officer while crossing the border into Azerbaijan. How do we solve this issue? We have institutional possibilities for solving this issue, for example Russian border guards can be deployed on the border. In case of Azerbaijan this principle will be violated, will Russian border guards be deployed there too? If there will be Azerbaijani border guards deployed there it means the principle gets violated,” Pashinyan said.

He said Armenia has offered a solution. “We have offered, for example, let Armenia and Azerbaijan outsource the border and customs services for each other’s citizens. There are countries in Europe where customs control is conducted not by the customs service but other specialized organizations. The same can be done for border control,” Pashinyan said.

It is unclear if Azerbaijan agrees to this.

He said there is seemingly consent that road toll must be charged and the transit of certain items will be banned.