Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement on Friday during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump that would boost bilateral economic ties after decades of conflict and move them toward a full normalization of relations.
The deal between the South Caucasus rivals – assuming it holds – would be a significant accomplishment for the Trump administration that is sure to rattle Moscow, which sees the region as within its sphere of influence.
“It’s a long time – 35 years – they fought and now they’re friends, and they’re going to be friends for a long time,” Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House, where he was flanked by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting almost all of the territory’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Trump said the two countries had committed to stop fighting, open up diplomatic relations and respect each other’s territorial integrity.
The agreement includes exclusive U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus that the White House said would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources.
Trump said the United States signed separate deals with each country to expand cooperation on energy, trade and technology, including artificial intelligence. Details were not released.
He said restrictions had also been lifted on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States, a development that could also worry Moscow.
Both leaders praised Trump for helping to end the conflict and said they would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump has tried to present himself as a global peacemaker in the first months of his second term. The White House credits him with brokering a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand and sealing peace deals between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Pakistan and India.
Source:Reuters/Ejiofor Ezeifeom