Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ani Badalyan has not denied reports that the US suggested a proposal to participate in the unblocking of regional transit links between Armenia and Azerbaijan, one of the major stumbling blocks in the ongoing peace process between the two countries.
Baku has long sought a route connecting its mainland to its exclave of Nakhchivan — which lies on the other side of Armenian territory.
According to the trilateral statement that put an end to the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, ‘all economic and transport links in the region shall be unblocked’. The agreement envisioned that Armenia would ‘guarantee the safety’ of the road connecting Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan, with Russian border guards taking control over transit routes.
On Tuesday, analyst Olesya Vartanyan published a piece in Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Centre suggesting that the US had reportedly proposed an alternate solution.
‘The administration [of US President Donald Trump] — eager to showcase its global conflict resolution efforts — has reportedly floated a new plan like the EU model but grounded in American strategic logic: US business participation as a stabilising force, akin to a recent deal on rare metals in Ukraine’, Vartanyan wrote.
The EU had previously proposed a similar solution, with independent foreign companies managing the route.
In response to a query from Armenpress regarding this report, Badalyan only stated that: ‘Various international partners regularly present their ideas on the normalisation of Armenia–Azerbaijan relations, including the unblocking of transport infrastructure between the two countries’.
She neither confirmed nor denied that the US was one of those ‘international partners’.
On Thursday, Armenian journalist Tatul Hakobyan reported that the US plan had already received ‘preliminary consent’ for an American-Armenian company to take control of the route, perhaps as a means of ‘alleviating the anger of the Russian and weakened Iranian sides’.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
