Reuters reports today that Friday’s trilateral meeting in Washinton D.C. between U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan will culminate in the signing of a peace framework that includes exclusive U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus.

The transit corridor, aka the “Zangezur Corridor”, envisages connecting Azerbaijan proper and its Nakhijevan exclave via Armenia’s southern Syunik Province.

The issue has been a cause of disagreement between Yerevan and Baku over the issue of who will control it.

Other details of Friday’s meeting have been voiced by Alex Raufoglu, a Washington D.C. correspondent covering the South Caucasus and a member of Foreign Press Correspondents Association & Club US.

Raufoglu, in a X post, writes that Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will sign a document “intended to create an irreversible pathway to peace by outlining the necessary steps for the full normalization of relations.”

The journalist, referring to unnamed sources, writes the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will initial a peace agreement they negotiated over the past few months and that they will also sign a joint letter to withdraw from the OSCE Minsk Group.

Raufoglu emphasizes that the use of the term “corridor” is no longer being considered. The new road, which will be called “Trump’s Roadmap for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), will become part of the Armenian-American joint venture agreement.

The journalist claims that according to American officials he spoke to, Armenia’s “sovereignty, territorial integrity and jurisdiction” over this road will be preserved.

Raufoglu says the project is purely commercial and will not have any military or security component. The US will not deploy troops there but will assume security through a private company.

Photos: jam-news.net