WASHINGTON — The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands Friday at a White House peace summit before signing an agreement aimed at ending decades of conflict.
President Donald Trump was in the middle as Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan flanked him on either side. As the two extended their arms in front of Trump to shake hands, the U.S. leader reached up and clasped his hands around theirs.
The two countries in the South Caucasus signed agreements with each other and the U.S. that will reopen key transportation routes while allowing the U.S. to seize on Russia’s declining influence in the region. The deal includes an agreement that will create a major transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, the White House said.
Trump said at the White House on Friday that naming the route after him was “a great honor for me” but “I didn’t ask for this.” A senior administration official, on a call before the event with reporters, said it was the Armenians who suggested the name.
Trump has sought to be known as a peacemaker and made no secret of the fact that he covets a Nobel Peace Prize. Friday’s signing adds to a series of peace and economic agreements brokered by the U.S. this year.
Both leaders said the breakthrough was made possible by Trump and his team. “We are laying a foundation to write a better story than the one we had in the past,” Pashinyan said, calling the agreement a “significant milestone.” President Trump in six months did a miracle,” Aliyev said.
Trump remarked on how long the conflict went on between the two countries. “Thirty-five years they fought, and now they’re friends and they’re going to be friends a long time,” he said.
That route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, which are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) patch of Armenian territory. The demand from Azerbaijan had held up peace talks in the past.
Trump indicated he’d like to visit the route, saying, “We’re going to have to get over there.” Asked how he feels about lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump said “very confident.”
Aliyev and Pashinyan on Friday joined a growing list of foreign leaders and other officials who have said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping ease long-running conflicts across the globe.
The peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda helped end the decadeslong conflict in eastern Congo, and the U.S. mediated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, while Trump intervened in clashes between Cambodia and Thailand by threatening to withhold trade agreements with both countries if their fighting continued. Yet peace deals in Gaza and Ukraine have been elusive.
