Baku and Tehran are holding high-level discussions over inspections by Azerbaijani police of drivers and cargo of trucks with Iranian license plates in the section of the Eyvazli settlement near Vorotan, which is under Azerbaijan’s control. The issue, which has caused tension between the two countries, was discussed the day before by the head of the Azerbaijani president’s staff and Iran’s ambassador to that country.
As official Baku reports, the Iranian ambassador, Seyed Abbas Mousavi, had effective discussions with Hikmet Hajiyev during their meeting “on issues of the bilateral agenda and discussed ways to overcome them.” Hajiyev, however, in his Twitter post on the matter, did not clarify which issues these were specifically and the ways to resolve them.
The Iranian diplomat, for his part, alluded to the existing tension in bilateral relations, likewise preferring not to open parentheses.
“Issues of common concern were discussed,” Seyed Abbas Mousavi informed via Twitter, who had recently been summoned to Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry to hear Baku’s complaint regarding the transportation of cargo by Iranian trucks to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Official Yerevan and Baku have confirmed that Azerbaijani police are conducting inspections on one section of the Goris-Kapan interstate road. The Armenian side reported that “Azerbaijani police are checking the documents of drivers and cargo of trucks with Iranian state license plates.”
The Azerbaijani side insists that under its tax code, vehicles entering and leaving the country must pay taxes, particularly for road use and for conducting international transport through Azerbaijan’s territory.
As a result of the 44-day war, some sections of the 21-kilometer stretch of the Goris-Kapan interstate road are disputed, according to Armenia’s Ministry of Defense, and that was the reason Russian border guards have been deployed in the area since the end of last year.
Aliyev’s administration has also appealed to the Russian side to prevent the “illegal passage of shipments” to Karabakh. Moscow has not yet responded.
