Representatives of Azerbaijan and Armenia traded jabs at a United Nations meeting on Tuesday about a corridor Armenia has been using to access the Karabakh region on their shared border.
Armenia's U.N. envoy Mher Margaryan accused Azerbaijan of ''illegally blocking'' the Lachin corridor and ''denying humanitarian access'' to a region with an Armenian population, a claim Baku strongly denies.
He called on Azerbaijan ''to immediately and unconditionally'' unblock the corridor and urged the U.N. Security Council to deploy a fact-finding mission to assess the humanitarian situation on the ground.
Several recent incidents have raised tensions between the two countries, the latest involving demonstrations near a Russian peacekeeping post on the Lachin road where Azerbaijani activists are protesting the illegal exploitation of mineral resources and its environmental impact on the surrounding area. The Lachin road, located in the disputed region of Karabakh, is the only artery connecting Armenia to the region.
Earlier in December, Azerbaijan struck a deal with the Russian peacekeeping contingent following negotiations for its experts to probe the Kızılbulak gold mine and the Demirli copper mine on Azerbaijani lands housing Armenians on the grounds that looting and illegal exploitation were observed in the region. However, Azerbaijani experts were prevented from entering the area by Armenians, which spurred the protest.
Azerbaijan's U.N. Ambassador Yashar Aliyev accused Armenia of exploiting the U.N. Security Council, accusing it of ''manipulation, distortion and falsification'' at the meeting called by Yerevan.
He said Armenia was ''misusing'' the corridor for the ''illicit trafficking'' of minerals and other resources as well as military activities.
''In addition to being illegal per se, these activities cause serious damage to the environment, polluting the area and destroying the fragile ecosystem,'' he noted.
He said the abuse of the corridor constitutes a breach of the trilateral agreements between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia.
"Under the Russian-brokered deal, Azerbaijan is committed to guaranteeing the security of people, vehicles, and cargo moving along the Lachin road," Ambassador Aliyev told the council, stressing that neither the Azerbaijani government nor the protesting activists have blocked the pathway.
"Video clips shared on social media show unimpeded passage of the various types of vehicles, including ambulances and humanitarian convoys," Aliyev said. "The claims regarding alleged humanitarian consequences of the situation are equally false. This is nothing beyond another manifestation of reckless manipulation by Armenia of the situation for obvious malign political purposes."
Miroslav Jenca, U.N. assistant secretary-general for political affairs, argued that a renewed conflict between Baku and Yerevan would likely impact the broader South Caucasus region and beyond.
''The United Nations, which is neither present in the Lachin corridor nor areas under the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers, is not in a position to verify or confirm these various claims and allegations,'' he said.
He also called on the international community to show a "redoubled diplomatic effort" to achieve a lasting peace settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood too said they were ''deeply concerned'' by the ongoing hindrance to the use of the Lachin corridor.
''Impediments to the use of the Lachin corridor set back the peace process,'' he said. ''We call on the government of Azerbaijan and others responsible for the corridor's security to restore free movement, including for humanitarian and commercial use, as soon as possible.''
Russia's deputy U.N. envoy Anna Evstigneeva urged both countries to exercise restraint and refrain from steps that could increase tension.
''We proceed from the premise that all disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan should be resolved exclusively by political and diplomatic means, and as far as border issues are concerned, within the framework of the work of the bilateral commission on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border with the advisory assistance of Russia,'' she said.
The former Soviet countries have been locked in a decades-old conflict over the control of Karabakh, which was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but illegally occupied by Armenia for three decades until 2020.
Baku and Yerevan fought two wars over the territory in the 1990s and again in the autumn of 2020 when six weeks of particularly intense clashes saw over 6,500 lives lost before a Russian-brokered truce ended the hostilities.
Under the 2020 deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had illegally occupied for decades and Russia stationed a force of 2,000 peacekeepers in the region to oversee a fragile truce after the three parties ratified the peacekeeping mission.