Leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia have signed a deal to end decades of conflict as they were chaired by President Donald Trump in the White House on Friday.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shook hands after the U.S. president described the incident as “historic.”
“It’s been a long time,” Trump said of the deal.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting for Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. They fought wars on the enclaves in the 1980s and 1990s, and violence broke out in the years thereafter.
On Friday, Trump said Armenia and Azerbaijan had promised to stop all “forever” battles and open up travel, business and diplomatic relations.
“We are building peace in the Caucasus today,” Aliyev said. “We have lost many years and are fully focused on war, occupation and bloodshed.”
Pashinyan called the signing a “important milestone” in the relationship between the two countries.
“They fought for 35 years and now they are friends and they will be friends for a long time,” Trump said at the event.
The White House said the U.S. will also help build a major transit corridor that will be appointed Trump’s path to international peace and prosperity as part of the deal.
The route will connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous Nakhchivans, which are separated. In the past, Aliyev asked Armenia to provide his country with a railway corridor leading to Nakhichevan.
Armenia wants to control the road, while Azerbaijani leaders have threatened to ride in the corridor by force in the past. This issue has ceased and has ceased previous peace negotiations.
Aliyev said both leaders praised Trump and his team for “six months for President Trump’s miracle.”
Trump said he also signed bilateral agreements with the two countries to expand energy and technology trade.
Trump attempted to reach a peace deal between several warring countries during his second term.
Friday’s summit also said the U.S. has expanded its influence in the region at the expense of Russia. For more than a century, the Kremlin has played the role of power and peace brokers there.
Recently, Putin himself was the main mediator of the conflict. The last agreement signed by Aliyev and Pashinyan was formulated by the Russian President.
As Trump now brings the two countries together, Putin is largely eliminated. Moscow is committed to inserting its interests into peace talks, but both sides abandon these suggestions in favor of the US solution.
On Friday, President Trump announced that he would hold talks in Alaska shortly before next week.
