WASHINGTON, DC \u2014 Several members of the U.S. Senate have demanded that the administration of President Joe Biden do more to end Azerbaijan\u2019s nine-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) strongly condemned by them.<\/p>\n
Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and other Democratic senators criticized on Thursday the administration\u2019s reluctance to impose sanctions on the Azerbaijani government during a committee hearing on the deepening humanitarian crisis in Karabakh.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the stores of Nagorno-Karabakh shelves are empty,\u201d Menendez said, opening the hearing<\/a>. \u201cAmbulances don\u2019t have gas. Miscarriages have nearly tripled. The BBC reports that one third of deaths there are now from malnutrition.\u201d<\/p>\n He accused Azerbaijani President Aliyev of seeking to \u201ceither coerce the people of Artsakh into political submission or starve them to death.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs it so important to us that we cozy up to someone who is in the process of creating ethnic cleansing?\u201d added Menendez.<\/p>\n Testifying before the committee, a senior U.S. State Department official insisted that Washington is doing its best to get Baku to lift the blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, medicine and other basic necessities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States will not countenance any effort or action, short-term or long-term, to ethnically cleanse or commit other atrocities against the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh,\u201d said Yuri Kim<\/a>, the acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.<\/p>\n The senators seemed unconvinced by her assurances. One of them, Ben Cardin, said Washington\u2019s failure to take \u201cdecisive action\u201d means that \u201cmore people are dying\u201d in Karabakh every day.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you have to put all possible tools on the table because gentle diplomacy does not seem to be working,\u201d another senator, Chris Murphy, told Kim.<\/p>\n The lawmakers specifically advocated a freeze on U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan. The U.S. Congress had banned all kinds of direct assistance to Baku through Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act passed in 1992. But a decade later it allowed U.S. administrations to waive the ban on an annual basis to help Azerbaijan\u2019s military and security agencies cope with terrorist threats.<\/p>\n Just like his predecessors, Biden waived Section 907 in April 2021 over strong objections of the Armenian community in the United States. His most recent waiver expired in June this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have not submitted a new waiver request yet because we are reviewing the situation very carefully,\u201d Kim said in this regard.<\/p>\n U.S. officials and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular have repeatedly urged Baku to unblock the sole road connecting Karabakh to Armenia. They have at the same time backed an alternative, Azerbaijani-controlled supply line for Karabakh sought by Baku and rejected by the Karabakh Armenians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON, DC \u2014 Several members of the U.S. Senate have demanded that the administration of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"post_badge":[],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",700,390,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez-250x139.png",250,139,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",640,357,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez-400x223.png",400,223,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",700,390,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",700,390,false],"covernews-slider-full":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",700,390,false],"covernews-slider-center":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",700,390,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png",700,390,false],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez-540x340.png",540,340,true],"covernews-medium-square":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez-400x250.png",400,250,true],"rpwe-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez-45x45.png",45,45,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"ArmenianCouncil","author_link":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/author\/armeniancouncil\/"},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Menendez.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3170,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/3170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_badge","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.armeniancouncil.org\/ACA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_badge?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}