Expert: Azerbaijan will have headaches, if Lachin corridor isn't controlled

“The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry may declare French presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse, who has visited Karabakh illegally, a persona non grata. But this is not the way out. If we do not control the Lachin corridor, we will still have a lot of headaches,” head of the Atlas Research Center, political scientist Elkhan Shahinoghlu told Report.

“Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in Brussels last week that if there is no corridor in Zangazur, there won’t be one in Lachin either. It was also stated that the Azerbaijani border and customs service would be stationed in Lachin. Yesterday, there were reports that French presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse paid an illegal visit to Karabakh via the Lachin corridor. The Russian military lets anybody through the Lachin corridor; they do not care. It was not the first case. Similar steps had been taken before. It seems that the peacekeepers are not acting in accordance with their mandates. This can affect future relationships. Therefore, it is necessary to control the Lachin corridor so that people like Valérie Pécresse cannot enter our territory without the permission of Azerbaijan and meet with Armenian separatists,” the expert stressed.

According to Shahinoghlu, similar steps are part of an ugly adventure: “Following the French presidential candidate, American congressmen, Russian MPs and others will enter Azerbaijan illegally. The goal of the Armenians is to increase the number of names on the ‘black list’ of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, and thus create tensions between different countries. If Pécresse is elected President of France, will official Baku not recognize her legitimacy and end relations with France? Armenians want it to happen. Therefore, our number one task should be to control the Lachin corridor, and this should happen before the opening of communication lines.”