Vahram Atanesyan, a former member of the Supreme Council of Armenia and the National Assembly of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, wrote on his Facebook page:
“In 1967, following a decision by the Council of Ministers (the government) of the USSR, the Azerbaijan Railways Department was established as a separate entity from the Transcaucasian Railway Department. Remember the date.
By the decision of the USSR government, the Minjevan-Meghri section was transferred to the management of the Azerbaijani Railways. That is, during the Soviet period, the Meghri route was located in the territory of the Armenian SSR but was managed by the Azerbaijan Railways Department.
Independently, the railways of Armenia were transferred to concession management by Russian Railways, which has a subsidiary in Armenia, the South Caucasus Railways.
I have raised this issue a couple of times. Who legally owns the “Meghri Railway”? We are not referring to the territory but to the infrastructure on the ground, which does not exist but was managed by the Azerbaijan Railways Administration during the Soviet era. Who is the manager now? Does the concession management of the “South Caucasus Railways” also extend to the Minjevan-Meghri “passage”? Should Armenia appoint a separate manager, independent of Russian Railways? Who will own the railway, with all its other infrastructure?
These are practical questions, and each of them can become the subject of a separate agreement with Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. And with us, everything is either black or white.”
