(MENAFN) US President Donald Trump welcomed Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to the White House on Friday for what he described as a “historic peace summit.” The meeting concluded with the signing of a joint declaration aimed at launching the development of the Zangezur corridor, a strategic transport link in the South Caucasus.

The planned route will connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through a narrow section of southern Armenia along the border with Iran. According to reports, American companies will oversee the construction and operation of the project, which will carry the official title ‘Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.’ Trump called having the corridor named after him “a great honor” and stressed he “did not ask for this.”

Both leaders expressed strong approval of the agreement. Pashinyan hailed it as a major breakthrough “for our countries and for our region and a success for the world,” adding that it solidified Trump’s “legacy as a statesman and the peacemaker.” Aliyev praised the US president for fostering stability in the Caucasus, stating, “and we are grateful for that.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet states, have a decades-long history of conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region that broke away from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s following a full-scale war. The dispute has fueled repeated clashes and multiple large-scale confrontations over the years, culminating in Azerbaijan’s military takeover of the territory in 2023.

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