Azerbaijan and Armenia sign a peace deal at the White House summit meeting

The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed an agreement aimed at ending a decades of conflict, as it hosted President Donald Trump in the White House on Friday.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pashinyan shook hands after the US president described the event as “historical”.

“It’s been coming for a long time,” Trump said to the agreement, which will open some key transport routes between the countries and increase the influence of the United States in the region.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought over Nagorno-Karabach, Ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, in the 1980s and 1990s, and violence has grown over the years since.

On Friday, Trump said Armenia and Azerbaijan had promised to stop all struggles “forever”, as well as to open trips, business and diplomatic relations.

“Today we establish peace in the Caucasus,” Aliyev said. “We have lost many years by being busy with wars and occupation and bloodshed.”

Pashinyan called the signing “significant cornerstone” in relations between the two countries.

“Thirty -five years are fighting, and now they are friends and they will be friends for a long time,” Trump said at the event.

The White House said that as part of the deal, the United States will also help build a large transit corridor, which will be declared Trump’s route for international peace and prosperity.

The route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomously poured Exclave, which are separated from the Armenian territory. In the past, Aliyev requested Armenia to give his country a railroad corridor to Nahichevan.

Armenia wanted to control the road and the Azerbaijani leader in the past threatened to take the corridor with force. The question stopped and stopped previous peace talks.

Both leaders praised Trump and his team throughout the match: “President Trump did a miracle after six months,” Aliyev said.

Trump said he also signed a bilateral agreement with both sides to expand energy and technological trade.

The US President seeks to make peaceful deals between several warring countries in his second term.

Friday’s summit also means that the United States is expanding its impact in the region at the expense of Russia. For more than a century, the Kremlin has played the role of the broker of power and peace there.

Most recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin himself acts as a major mediator in the conflict. The last agreement signed by Aliyev and Pashinyan was made by Putin.

Since Trump now unites the two sides, Putin is largely aside. Moscow is working to insert its interests in peace talks, but both countries have abandoned these proposals in favor of an American decision.

Friday’s message came shortly before Trump announced that he would meet Putin for conversations in Alaska next week.