The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed an agreement aimed at ending decades of conflict as they were hosted by President Donald Trump at the White House.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shook hands after the US president described the event as “historic”.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Trump said of the agreement, which will reopen some key transport routes between the countries and increase US influence in the region.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, in the 1980s and 1990s and violence has flared up in the years since.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a US-brokered peace agreement during a meeting with US President Donald Trump that would boost bilateral economic ties after decades of conflict and move them toward a full normalization of their 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.
Trump said the two countries had committed to stop fighting , open up diplomatic relations and respect each other’s territorial integrity.
Donald Trump holds the hands of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as they shake hands between each other during a trilateral signing event, at the White House, in Washington, D.C.,
The agreement includes exclusive US 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.
