News - Ruben Rubinyan to Hikmet Hajiyev: Armenia has never agreed to provide extraterritorial corridor to Azerbaijan

Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia can protect communication security in their territories. The deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, Ruben Rubinyan, on Friday stated this at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey. "On behalf of Armenia, I can say that we have a recently created unit within the National Security Service of the country. Thus, we have strengthened the task of security of communications passing through Armenia. This topic is not even worth discussing," he said. Also, Rubinyan stated that there is no territorial unit called "Zangezur" in Armenia, there is Syunik Province, Meghri city, and other cities in the country, and the latter has never agreed to provide an extraterritorial corridor to Azerbaijan. "Armenia's position regarding the unblocking of communications in the region is expressed in the Crossroads of Peace project [introduced by the Armenian government]. We want to unblock communications based on the principles of sovereignty, legislation, territorial integrity, equality, and reciprocity," said the deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament. Hikmet Hajiyev, aide to the president of Azerbaijan, had announced the need to provide a "corridor," arguing that Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhichevan was allegedly under siege, and Turkey's help there was important. "According to the tripartite statement of November 9, [2020] Armenia had to ensure that access; now the matter is in Armenia's court," Hajiyev had said, in particular. In response, Ruben Rubinyan said that Armenia named its aforesaid project "Crossroads of Peace" because it wants peace. However, according to him, Baku continues to use the term "Zangezur corridor," whereas Armenia has never agreed to provide an extraterritorial corridor to Azerbaijan.