YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. United States Senator and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Bob Menendez expressed concern to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the Biden administration providing assistance to Azerbaijan’s Aliyev regime given its invasion of Armenia in 2022, the blockade of Lachin Corridor and other aggressive actions.

“In the past year we’ve seen Azerbaijan invade Armenia, manufacture a food security crisis in Nagorno Karabakh with its ongoing blockade, continue rampant repression domestically, including with the unjustified detention of activists like Bakhtiyar Hajiyev,” Menendez said during a committee hearing where Blinken was testifying. “ In the past 5 years we’ve seen Azerbaijan start a war that killed 6,500 people, force almost a hundred thousand Karabakh Armenians from their homes. So I am concerned about providing assistance to the Aliyev regime. But it strikes me as particular egregious that the administration would request seven hundred thousand dollars in international military education and training funds for Azerbaijan. So can you explain to the American people why we would want to provide military education and training to an aggressor state that attacks its neighbors and violates the rights of its citizens?”

“Senator, I know we’ve had an opportunity to discuss this before,” Blinken replied. “There’re few things here. First of all, when it comes to the military assistance, and particularly to the infamous section 901 waiver that we engage in. Look, there are some very practical reasons for that. One is to actually strengthen, as you know, the interoperability between their forces, ours, NATO’s, they engage in peacekeeping. They have a long border with Iran, that needs defending. But also, to this point we think there’s real benefit to increasing the Western education, maybe orientation of some of their officers.”

Blinken’s remarks angered Menendez and the senator interrupted the Secretary, saying : “I hope that Western education isn’t what they’ve learned to do what they did in blockading these people, starting a conflict, 6,500 dead. That, I hope, is not Western education.”

Blinken answered: “Just to step back for a moment, because I do think this is an important moment and something that I think we should really also pursue the conversation on. I’ve been very engaged on seeing what we can do to help Armenia and Azerbaijan come to peace agreement that normalizes the relations between them, as well as deal with obviously the rights and protections for Armenian ethics in Nagorno Karabakh, dealing with border delimitation, etcetera. And I think there’s an opportunity, I don’t want to exaggerate it, but an opportunity actually to bring a peace agreement to fruition. I had Prime Minister Pashinyan and President Aliyev together in Munich at the Security Conference, I had the Foreign Ministers here in Washington, I expect that they’ll come back, we worked on a text and this is not something that we are imposing on Armenia, we are answering the strong desire expressed by Armenia to see if we can help them reach an agreement which would end, at least in many ways, thirty plus years of conflict.”

Blinken added that he’s been “pressing” Azerbaijan to re-open the Lachin Corridor.

“I am pressing on Azerbaijan, including as recently as this week, to re-open that corridor. We are working on that,” the US Secretary of State said, referring to the “real problems in Lachin Corridor”.

“I do think there is without exaggeration a moment of opportunity that would profoundly be in the interests of the people of Armenia, as well as Azerbaijan,” Blinken concluded.