Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a historic peace agreement Friday at the White House, with former President Donald Trump presiding over the ceremony.
The deal aims to end nearly 40 years of tensions and armed conflict between the two nations over the Nagorno-Karabakh region in southwestern Azerbaijan.
Aliyev called the signing “a great new history” and thanked Trump for bringing “peace” to the Caucasus. Pashinyan described the agreement as “opening a chapter of peace,” praising Trump’s role as a “statesman and peacemaker.”
Trump said the three leaders held “extensive” talks and signed “voluminous documents” to secure the deal. “It’s a long time, 35 years, they fought, and now they’re friends, and they’re going to be friends for a long time,” Trump said.
Long-Running Dispute Over Nagorno-Karabakh
The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict began in the late 1980s, when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region largely populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away with backing from Armenia.
Azerbaijan regained full control in 2023 after a military offensive, prompting nearly all of the area’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Trump announced that