"Secretary Blinken shared his belief that peace was possible. He also expressed the United States’ deep concern that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin corridor undermines efforts to establish confidence in the peace process, and emphasized the importance of reopening the Lachin corridor to commercial and private vehicles as soon as possible," Miller said in a Sunday statement.
Blinken, who spoke with Aliyev a day after his phone call with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, underscored the importance of Azerbaijan-Armenia peace discussions and pledged continued US support.
On Saturday, Blinken told Pashinyan that direct dialogue and diplomacy are the only path to a durable peace in the South Caucasus.
The US, Russia and the European Union have taken turns to try and negotiate a peace pact between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the hope of ending their long-running conflict. The regional rivals have been involved in two major military conflicts over the Azerbaijani Armenian-dominated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in September 2020, marking the worst escalation since the 1990s. Hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered trilateral declaration of ceasefire signed in November 2020. The two former Soviet countries agreed to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the region. Occasional clashes have since occurred on the border.
Earlier this month, the Azerbaijani State Border Service said its units had set up a border checkpoint in the Lachin corridor, the only land route linking Armenia and the Armenian-dominated Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Baku explained the decision by the alleged illegal use of the road by Armenia and security threats, noting that the Russian peacekeeping contingent and the Russian-Turkish monitoring center were informed about this. Yerevan protested Baku's move, stressing that it violated the 2020 trilateral declaration.