The US Department of State is deeply concerned about the establishment of an Azerbaijani checkpoint on the Lachin corridor. Vedant Patel, Principal Deputy Spokesperson of the US Department of State, stated this during Tuesday’s State Department briefing.
“This issue in the South Caucasus is something that the [US] Secretary [of State] himself deeply values and places a lot of importance on. And as you saw us say over the weekend, the [US State] department is deeply concerned about the establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor. Frankly, (…) it undermines efforts to establish confidence in the peace process, and we are of the viewpoint that there should be free and open movement of people and commerce on the Lachin corridor. But [US] Senior Advisor [Louis] Bono, Assistant Secretary [Dereck] Hogan, the Secretary – we’re going to continue to remain deeply engaged on this,” Patel said.
And to the question whether the US representatives did not see in the midst of negotiation on the ground that such an action was being prepared, Patel responded that he was not going to get into specifics of diplomatic assessments on the ground or the specifics of the conversations that they have had.
