The French aid convoy fails to reach Nagorno-Karabakh

Several trucks and assistants – including the mayor of Paris – are blocked by Azerbaijani checkpoints. Armenians refuse to supply supplies from Azerbaijan.

French politicians tried unsuccessfully to send an aid convoy to the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been isolated from Azerbaijan for months. “Our 10 truckloads of humanitarian aid are prohibited,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo wrote on Wednesday on social networking site X, formerly Twitter.

She and other regional politicians from France had to hold out at Korneidzor in the southwestern Caucasus Republic of Armenia, where the so-called Lachin corridor to Nagorno-Karabakh begins.

There is hardly any food or medicine

Under international law, the region, which has been disputed for decades, belongs to Azerbaijan, which wants to bring nearly 120,000 Armenians under its control. Hidalgo demanded that the road, which was blocked by an Azerbaijani checkpoint, be opened. It was a “complete violation of human rights” that no humanitarian aid had reached Nagorno-Karabakh. Residents of the cordoned off area are desperate because there is almost no food or medicine left.

Neither the European Union, nor the United States, nor Russia have been able to defuse the crisis between the two long-separated neighbours, Azerbaijan and Armenia. French President Emmanuel Macron and Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev spoke by phone on Tuesday evening. Aliyev noted that the population in Karabakh could also be supplied from Azerbaijan. However, the Armenians of Karabakh block the road from the Azerbaijani city of Agdam because they fear that they will have to accept the rule of Baku with food.

However, the Azerbaijani Red Crescent, a relief organization, is preparing an aid convoy to Nagorno-Karabakh. To show its point of view on the conflict, Baku also invited foreign journalists to accompany this transfer. Hidalgo Macron demanded that France, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, move ahead with a resolution on the opening of the Lachin corridor. (appa)