President Donald Trump will meet the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia to sign a joint peace declaration aimed at ending decades of war at a White House meeting Friday, as well as pacts giving the US rights to develop a transit route through the South Caucasus.
US officials portrayed the agreement as a win for Washington and a setback for Russia, Iran and China as they outlined the plans in a call with reporters before the events scheduled for later in the day.
The two former Soviet neighbors have been in conflict since the waning years of the USSR when Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan. That spiraled into wars that killed more than 30,000 people in the early 1990s and at least 6,000 during a 44-day conflict in 2020.
Russia, the US and France tried unsuccessfully for decades to negotiate a settlement in a region that sits at the crossroads of trade and energy flows but has been riven by years of tensions.
The deal would be the latest example of Trump taking credit for a peace agreement. Trump has talked up his role in a treaty between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, and in ceasefires between Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, and Thailand and Cambodia.
“The United States will also sign Bilateral Agreements with both Countries to pursue Economic opportunities together, so we can fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus Region,” Trump said in a social media post Thursday.
Although senior administration officials acknowledged the agreement will presage more talks – and many more details will need to be hashed out — they said the arrangement promised to help ease regional tensions that have handed Russian President Vladimir Putin leverage.
Under the agreement, the US would get exclusive development rights to a transit route across southern Armenia linking the bulk of Azerbaijan’s territory to the exclave of Naxcivan, which borders its ally Turkey. The administration is calling it the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity .
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had rejected a transit corridor as a breach of sovereignty, while saying that borders and transport routes would be open as a result of a peace agreement anyway.
The US officials said the route would open up trade opportunities for Armenia in partnership with the US. Talks on the commercial elements of the deal will begin next week.
Azerbaijan exports oil through a pipeline connecting its Caspian Sea output with Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan via Georgia and bypassing Armenia. It also supplies natural gas to 10 European countries, including Greece and Italy, via the US-backed Southern Gas Corridor. In 2022, it signed a deal with the European Union to double gas exports to the bloc by 2027.
Energy-rich Azerbaijan and landlocked Armenia have sought to negotiate a final peace agreement since the 2020 war, including a delineation of their state border, though talks have stumbled over Azerbaijani demands for changes to the Armenian constitution to exclude claims on Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russian President Vladimir Putin brokered a truce to halt the 2020 war, in which Azerbaijan took most of Nagorno-Karabakh and reclaimed six surrounding areas occupied by Armenian forces for decades. But the sides did not reach a final peace agreement.
In September 2023, Azerbaijani troops gained control of the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning military operation that triggered the exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians from the territory into neighboring Armenia. Russia peacekeepers were withdrawn last year after the Armenian population fled.
The 2020 war represented a strategic triumph for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed Azerbaijan and was able to muscle into Russia’s backyard at time.
With assistance from Kate Sullivan.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
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