Washington (AP) – Leader of Armenia and Azerbaijan It is expected to sign a peace agreement at the White House on Friday. decades of conflictPresident Donald Trump said.
Trump also said Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev “we can fully unlock the possibilities of the South Caucasus region as we together sign a contract with the US to pursue economic opportunities.”
“Many leaders have tried to end the war without ever succeeding thanks to ‘Trump’,” Trump wrote on his Truth social site Thursday night.
Future agreements could end decades of conflict and could set the stage for the reopening of major transport corridors throughout the South Caucasus, which had been closed since the early 1990s.
Three U.S. officials who were not permitted to speak publicly prior to the announcement made statement on condition of anonymity, but said the deal includes a major breakthrough establishing major transport corridors throughout the region.
The agreement, according to officials, grants the rights to a US lease, develops corridors, and names it the Trump Route for international peace and prosperity.
It will link Azerbaijan to the Naktiban region. The Nakhtiban is separated from the rest of the country by 32 kilometers (20 miles) of Armenian territory.
The transit corridor will ultimately include rail lines, oil and gas lines and fiber optic lines to allow for the movement of goods. The contract does not require the US to pay for the construction of the transport corridor, but instead requires private companies to develop it.
The deal was followed by Trump’s special mission, Steve Witkov, visited Azerbaijan’s Baku capital, and held discussions between the parties earlier this year.
There’s almost 40 years of blood between them
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought for nearly 40 years for control of the Karabakh region, known internationally as Nagorno Karabakh.
During the Soviet era, areas where the population was almost Armenians were depopulated had an autonomous state within Azerbaijan. The longstanding tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azerbaijan were fuelled in memory of the 1.5 million Armenian massacre by Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1915 – boiled down to the finish of the Soviet Union in its final year.
The conflict broke out in 1988 when the region made a bid to join Armenia. As the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Armenia declared independence, hostility escalated into a full-scale war that killed an estimated 30,000 people and drove away about a million people.
When the war ended in 1994 with a ceasefire, the ethnic Armenian army supported by the Yerevan government not only controlled the region, but also captured the wide swath of Azerbaijan.
Decades of international mediation efforts have failed. In September 2020, Azerbaijan began a strategy to regain its region. Turkey, a NATO member with ethnic, cultural and historical ties to Azerbaijan, has given it strong support.
In a six-week battle that included heavy artillery, rockets and drones that killed more than 6,700 people, the Azerbaijani forces drove Armenian forces from outside Karabakh. They also reclaimed a wide chunk of Karabakh. The peace agreement brokered by Russia saw the deployment of approximately 2,000 troops into the region as peacekeeping forces.
Azerbaijan then regained everything about Karabakh in September 2023 with the Lightning Military Campaign. Almost all of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh, fled to Armenia in a week, fearing the rule of Azerbaijan.
Russia was busy with the war in Ukraine, not intervening, not angering Armenian leadership, responding by reducing ties with Moscow and strengthening ties with the West.
The outlook for peace and better relationships
After regaining Karabakh, Azerbaijan engaged in consultations with Armenia on normalizing the tie. As part of the negotiations, Armenia agreed to hand over several border villages to Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan also requires Armenia to rewrite its constitution, including references to future integration of Armenia and the Karabakh region. Authorities have yet to present a revised draft in the face of public protests.
An important stumbling in peace negotiations was Azerbaijan, seeking a land bridge to the Nakhtiban region. Azerbaijan does not trust Armenia to control the so-called Zangetour corridor, but Armenia stubbornly resisted control by third parties, and viewed it as a violation of sovereignty.
It was not clear how that resistance was overcome in the trading.
Russia, which has a military base in Armenia, had previously proposed deploying troops to secure corridors. Armenia rejected the idea, succumbing to reducing its ties with Russia in favor of closer ties with the West.
“Russia Vartanyan, an expert in the South Caucasus, said, “Russia is left on the sidelines.
“Russia currently lacks the resources to deal with Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Vartanyan said.
Future peace agreements also paved the way for Turkey and Azerbaijan to reopen their borders with Armenia, which had been closed for nearly 40 years, making the hellish country rely on limited transportation routes through Georgia and Iran.
Turkey sees the future agreement as part of an effort to expand its influence in the South Caucasus, but Armenia sees reopening borders and resuming trade with Turkey as a top priority. Pashinyan, who visited Turkey in June on his first visit by Armenian leaders, normalized his relationship with Türkiye.
“In Armenia, it guarantees stability and enables inclusion in Turkish markets, ports, investments and major regional transport corridors,” Vartanyan said, adding that the peace agreement will help Armenia become an important link between Europe and Asia.
“Armenia has a wide range of transportation infrastructure since the Soviet era, including railways and highways that can significantly expand trade routes through the South Caucasus,” she said.
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