BAKU. April 27 (Interfax) - Armenia declined Azerbaijan's proposal on parallel border control at the entrance to the Lachin road, and therefore, Baku has taken steps to ensure a transparent control mechanism, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said.
"One of Azerbaijan's proposals was transparent control on the Lachin road. However, Armenia declined the proposal on parallel control. In that case, to ensure transparent control on the Lachin road, Azerbaijan undertook steps to perform passage control functions on April 23," Bayramov said at a press conference with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna in Baku on Thursday.
The Lachin road has been and will be open for all humanitarian purposes, as is stipulated by the trilateral statement of November 2020, he said.
For the past 2.5 years since the trilateral statement was signed, Armenia has used the Lachin road to transport and plant mines in Azerbaijan's territory, and to illegally transfer Armenian troops and military hardware, Bayramov said.