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By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Related Press
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Vice President JD Vance landed in Armenia on Monday — a rustic that no sitting U.S. vp or president has visited earlier than — because the Trump administration appears to be like to advance a U.S.-brokered deal aimed toward ending a decades-long battle with Azerbaijan.
The vp and his spouse, Usha, had been greeted with a pink carpet, an honor guard and a delegation of officers. Armenian and American flags hung from poles from because the delegation drove to the vp’s assembly, with some demonstrators on the aspect of the highway, together with one with an indication that stated, “Does Trump assist Devils?”
Vance is assembly Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who signed a deal on the White Home in August meant to reopen key transportation routes with Azerbaijan. At that assembly, the international locations signed agreements reaffirming their dedication to signing a peace treaty. The textual content of the treaty was initialed by overseas ministers, which signifies preliminary approval. However the leaders have but to signal the treaty and parliaments have but to ratify it.
Vance arrived in Yerevan after spending 4 days in Milan on the Winter Olympics along with his household, and plans to journey to Azerbaijan on Tuesday.
Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are each on President Donald Trump’s new Board of Peace. The group was initially envisioned to supervise the Gaza ceasefire plan, however has since expanded in dimension and ambition. Trump plans to convene the first assembly of the board in Washington this month.
The cope with the 2 former Soviet republics requires the creation of a serious transit hall dubbed the Trump Route for Worldwide Peace and Prosperity. It’s anticipated to attach Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave, that are separated by a 32-kilometer-wide (20-mile-wide) patch of Armenian territory.
The land bridge had been a sticking level in resolving a battle that lasted for almost 4 many years over management of the Karabakh area, identified internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh. The area had been below the management of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994. A six-week struggle in 2020 resulted in Azerbaijan regaining management of elements of the area and the encircling areas. In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a blitz that compelled the separatist authorities to capitulate. After Azerbaijan regained full management of Karabakh, most of its 120,000 Armenian residents fled to Armenia.
Related Press writers Josh Boak in Washington and Daria Litvinova in Tallinn contributed to this report.
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