Azerbaijan and Armenia reach peace agreement at the White House

BarcelonaArmenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a peace agreement at the White House on Friday. Sitting between the two leaders was US President Donald Trump, who is hoping to score points toward the Nobel Peace Prize. "Thirty-five years of death and hatred, and now it will be love and success together," the Republican celebrated, also taking the opportunity to once again speak about the war in Ukraine and assert that it could end "very soon." He has been saying this for six months. Even so, he again accepted some of the Kremlin's demands to end the conflict and said that "a certain exchange of territories for the benefit of both parties" will be necessary.

The document is a first step toward ending the conflict. between the two countries over the Nagorno-Karabakh region –which is mostly Armenian, but within Azerbaijan–, which has been going on for more than 30 years. “If it weren’t for President Trump and his team, Armenia and Azerbaijan would probably have ended up in this endless process of negotiations again today,” Aliyev said.

Trump announced the meeting on Thursday, calling it “historic” and taking full credit for it: “There are many leaders who have tried to end the war without success, so far, thanks to Trump.” The agreement was reached after US special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Baku in March, but it should be noted that the Biden administration was also working in that direction.

The visit of the two Asian leaders to the White House should also allow for the signing of bilateral agreements with Washington, which will be made possible thanks to US assistance in resolving a dispute over a shared corridor between Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to US military officials told the Associated Press. Armenia has granted the United States exclusive rights to develop the Zangezur Corridor for 99 years, a 32-kilometer Armenian territory separating Azerbaijan from its Naxççivan enclave. With this transfer, they will be linked. With the signing of the agreement, the Americans will name the corridor the Trump Route to International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) and will sublease it to a private consortium that will build rail, fiber optic, oil, and gas lines.

The agreements are also expected to restore the deteriorating relations between Washington and Baku, with the lifting of US restrictions on defense cooperation with Azerbaijan. Both Asian countries will also leave the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Minsk Group, which for decades has been dedicated to resolving the dispute in the region.

A conflict that has lasted more than three decades

Armenia, which has a Christian majority, and Azerbaijan, which has a Muslim majority, are locked in a conflict over the sovereignty of the Azeri region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has an ethnic Armenian majority and which Azerbaijan captured Armenian forces in 2023, in an offensive that provoked the exodus of more than 100,000 ArmeniansThe agreement signed at the White House says nothing about the return of these people to Nagorno-Karabakh and maintains Azerbaijan's administration over this territory. The dispute dates back to the early 1990s, after the two republics gained independence from the Soviet Union and Nagorno-Karabakh lost the autonomy it once enjoyed. Since then, the corridor has been closed, but the United States must now reopen it.

With this agreement, Donald Trump hopes to build momentum to win the Nobel Peace Prize, for which he has already been nominated by figures such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Armenian Americans are expected to be dissatisfied, as the agreement does not include specific provisions to resolve the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from Nagorno-Karabakh or the situation of those imprisoned over decades of conflict.