Armenia, the US and Azerbaijan sign the “Trump’s Way” agreement: video
8 August 23:47
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and US President Donald Trump have signed a historic trilateral agreement. This is reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to the broadcast of the signing of the agreement.
Pashinyan, Trump and Aliyev signed a joint declaration on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. It will be known by the acronym TRIPP.
It was noted that the US President would sign the document as a witness, and the Prime Minister of Armenia and the President of Azerbaijan would confirm their path to peace, prosperity, and stability by signing it.
Trump said that Armenia and Azerbaijan had agreed to abandon military confrontation and restore diplomatic relations.
“They were at war for 35 years. Now they’re friends,” Trump said following a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Washington.
Pashinyan said that Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
What is known about the agreement
The agreement includes exclusive U.S. rights to develop a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus, dubbed the Trump Road to International Peace and Prosperity, Reuters reports.
U.S. officials said the agreement was agreed upon during repeated visits to the region and would provide a framework for working toward full normalization of relations between the two countries.
Neither the joint declaration to be signed nor the individual bilateral agreements with the United States were made public.
It was not immediately clear how the agreement being signed on Friday would resolve such difficult issues as the demarcation of common borders and Baku’s demand for changes to Yerevan’s constitution, which refers to a 1989 call for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan.
Officials at the press briefing avoided discussing the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
The text of the agreement consists of 17 points and is currently confidential, but some details are already known. The document is aimed at normalizing relations between the countries through mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and also provides for the development of economic cooperation.
As a result of the agreement, the United States also lifts restrictions on military cooperation with Azerbaijan and plans to cooperate with both countries in the fields of energy, trade, and AI development.
The section of the Zangezour Corridor that runs through Armenia is being transferred to an American company for 99 years. The transit corridor will be called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP.
Earlier, Trump said that Armenia and Azerbaijan would sign a U.S.-mediated peace agreement between the countries that could end decades of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
As Reuters previously reported, the peace agreement includes a commitment to strengthen economic ties between the two countries after decades of conflict, the signing of separate U.S.-brokered agreements in the areas of energy, technology, trade, infrastructure and border security, and documents requesting the dissolution of the Minsk Group, which has been negotiated by France, Russia and the United States since its creation in 1992.
The Armenian prime minister and the Azerbaijani president also signed agreements with the United States to “jointly pursue economic opportunities so that we can fully realize the potential of the South Caucasus region,” Trump had previously announced.
What is known about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
The confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan dates back to the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR. At that time, Nagorno-Karabakh actually fell out of Baku’s control and came under the influence of Yerevan.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan conducted the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” and established full control over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Prior to that, the majority of the region’s population was ethnic Armenians, who fled their homes en masse after the end of the fighting.
Subsequently, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan officially recognized Azerbaijan’s territory of 86.6 thousand square kilometers, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh.
As a result of negotiations between the countries, an agreement on a ceasefire was reached. The parties are currently discussing a peace agreement, the text of which has already been agreed upon.
Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize
Observers believe that the meeting at the White House on August 8 could be a great opportunity for Trump to strengthen his position in the fight for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The White House said that Trump has already successfully put an end to several global conflicts, including disputes between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded on December 10 in Oslo.
