Pashinian confirmed reports that the United States proposed recently that an American company be hired for that purpose. The idea has been discussed during Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks, he said, adding that no final agreement has been reached yet.
Pashinian spoke of ongoing “intensive discussions” on the creation of a company that would run the corridor and invest in it. He said it would have “many functions,” including ensuring the security of the transit routes.
“We talk a lot about railways and highways, but in this context we are also talking about pipelines, power lines, telecommunications cables, and that is an infrastructure that needs to be managed and created,” he told a news conference.
Pashinian, who met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Abu Dhabi last week, claimed that there have already been precedents of such “outsourcing” in Armenia. He pointed to the fact that the country’s main international airport as well as water supply and railway networks are managed by foreign companies.
“I don’t think that Armenia's sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territorial integrity have been violated in any way there,” he said.
People arriving in Armenia through Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport have to go through Armenian border and customs checks. Pashinian did not deny under the arrangement proposed by the U.S. Armenian border and customs officers would not check in a similar fashion cargo and passenger traffic between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan. He said that modern technology would be used to exclude physical contact between the officers and Azerbaijani travelers.
Baku has said all along that the traffic must be exempt from Armenian border controls. Yerevan has previously rejected these demands.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who strongly supports the Azerbaijani demands for an extraterritorial corridor, said early this month that Yerevan has adopted a “more flexible approach.” Erdogan met with Pashinian in Istanbul on June 20.
The corridor issue is understood to have been high on the agenda of Pashinian’s July 10 talks with Aliyev. Although the official Armenian and Azerbaijani readouts of the talks did not explicitly mention it, Pashinian’s domestic critics have speculated that he agreed to make far-reaching concessions to Baku in hopes of holding on to power.
They have also expressed serious concern about the reported U.S. proposal. They say that such an arrangement would undermine Armenian sovereignty over the transport links for Nakhichevan passing through Syunik, the only Armenian province bordering Iran. Tehran is strongly opposed to the so-called “Zangezur corridor” sought by Baku and Ankara.
“By proposing to transfer control of the Syunik corridor to a third party, ostensibly to ensure uninterrupted communication between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan, Nikol Pashinian is jeopardizing Armenia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Vartan Oskanian, a former foreign minister, said, reacting to Pashinian’s latest comments.
“A corridor under the control of a third party … would set a dangerous precedent,” Oskanian wrote on Facebook. “It would effectively cut off a route through Armenia’s territory, subordinating national sovereignty to the transit rights of a state that not only does not renounce violence, but also continually threatens Armenia’s security and viability.”
Speaking the day after the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Abu Dhabi, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Thomas Barrack, revealed that Washington has also proposed a 100-year lease on the Armenian section of the would-be road and railway for Nakhichevan.
Pashinian’s press secretary, Nazeli Baghdasarian, ruled out such a possibility on Monday, arguing that Armenian law allows only the lease of agricultural land for farming or grazing purposes. However, the premier seemed open to the idea on Wednesday.
“Under our legislation … this is called a construction permit,” he said, commenting on the would-be lease. “And under certain conditions, investments granted under this right to build remain or become the property of the Republic of Armenia after the expiration of a contract.”
Pashinian further declared that Armenians must not be afraid of the word “corridor” in relation to transport links with Azerbaijan.
“In many cases, when our international partners say ‘corridor,’ we jump up a little, and they jump up in turn, saying, ‘But what did we say?’” he said. “On the contrary, the whole world is looking for corridors everywhere.”