Trump Says Armenia, Azerbaijan to Sign Peace Deal at White House

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said he would host the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for a peace summit with expectation that the pair will sign an agreement seeking to end decades of conflict between the South Caucasus nations. 

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Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan and both Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ali Asadov and President Ilham Aliyev are scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Friday.

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“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. “I am very proud of these courageous Leaders for doing the right thing for the Great People of Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

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The US, Russia and France have long sought to negotiate a settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to end the fight over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The countries have clashed repeatedly. More than 30,000 people were killed in a war in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, while roughly 6,000 were killed in a 44-day war in 2020 and dozens died in border clashes in September 2022.

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The territory is populated by Armenians but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Russian President Vladimir Putin brokered a truce to halt the 2020 war, but the sides did not reach a final peace agreement. The State Department under former President Joe Biden mediated peace talks but those stumbled over Azerbaijani demands that the Armenian constitution be changed to exclude claims on Nagorno-Karabakh.

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Trump, who has long desired a Nobel Peace Prize, has sought to be recognized as a peacemaker in his second term, including by using trade and the threat of tariffs as a tool for resolving geopolitical disputes. 

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Trump has touted his role in helping broker a peace treaty between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, a ceasefire between Iran and Israel as well as one between India and Pakistan. India, though, has bristled at Trump’s claims that his threat to cut off access to US markets brought an end to the clash with fellow nuclear power Pakistan earlier this year.

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“Many Leaders have tried to end the War, with no success, until now, thanks to ‘“TRUMP,”’ the US president wrote in his announcement of the Friday event.

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Azerbaijan is also an energy-rich nation, and the region is critical to oil and gas supplies. Azerbaijan exports oil through a pipeline connecting its Caspian Sea output with Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. It also supplies natural gas to several 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. 

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Armenia hosts Russia’s sole military base in the southern Caucasus region. Relations between Armenia and Moscow, however, have deteriorated since 2022 when Armenians accused Russia of failing to provide military support under a mutual-defense pact during border clashes with Azerbaijan. 

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Russia sent 2,000 troops as peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh as part of the 2020 truce, but the troops didn’t intervene when Azerbaijan took full control of the territory in 2022 and were withdrawn last year after the Armenian population had fled. 

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—With assistance from Meghashyam Mali.

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