Assistant to Azerbaijani President: There are powerful forces within Armenia that do not want situation to change

There are powerful forces within Armenia that do not want this situation to change, or this story to be fully told, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan - Head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Presidential Administration, Hikmat Hajiyev said in an article published in Politico.

According to him, the Azerbaijan government has repeatedly offered to supply the Armenians of Karabakh with food, medicine and more via roads that provide closer and faster passage than Lachin: "The land routes Azerbaijan offers are acknowledged as viable and usable by the European Union, the US and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and just this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the 'immediate and simultaneous opening of both corridors. But what has been reported in the international media is something different. The idea that solely Armenia should supply ethnic Armenians living in the neighboring country of Azerbaijan through a single monoethnic route is - we are encouraged to believe - somehow acceptable to the international community and media. And we are told this is because this conflict is different to others, that Armenians cannot live side by side in the same country with Azerbaijanis because of our history. But both our past and present teach us this simply is not true. Before the war of the 1990s, Azerbaijanis and ethnic Armenians lived together, side by side, in Karabakh in peace. Today, a 30,000-strong Jewish community lives in Azerbaijan. An evangelical Christian community is growing. Georgians, Russians, Ukrainians all make up today’s multiethnic and multireligious country. This could, and should, apply to the Armenians of Karabakh as well."