PARIS — France will try to drum up stronger international pressure on Azerbaijan to end its continuing blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday.
“I will have an opportunity to speak this week with [Armenian] Prime Minister Pashinyan and with [Azerbaijani] President Ilham Aliyev,” Macron told French ambassadors to countries around the world.
“We will demand full respect for the Lachin humanitarian corridor and we will again take a diplomatic initiative in this direction internationally to increase the pressure,” he said in remarks cited by French media.
Macron gave no details of that initiative. France’s Le Figaro daily reported last week that Paris is “preparing to submit” to the UN Security Council a draft resolution designed to help Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population left “on the verge of starvation.”
Baku was quick to denounce Macron’s latest remarks, saying that his “language of pressure” is unacceptable. An Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman also objected to the French leader’s use of the term “Lachin humanitarian corridor.” He said it violates Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
