The clause will reportedly be part of a peace agreement which the South Caucasus states are set to ink on Friday

US President Donald Trump plans to obtain exclusive US development rights to a strategic South Caucasus transit route during an upcoming meeting with Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders at the White House, Reuters has reported, citing officials.

Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, have been locked in a decades-long territorial dispute over the breakaway region of Karabakh since the late 1980s. Baku regained control over the predominantly ethnic-Armenian-populated territory in 2023.

Trump has announced that Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will join him for a trilateral summit and ink a peace deal in the White House on Friday. "The United States will also sign Bilateral Agreements with both Countries to pursue Economic opportunities," he wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.

According to Reuters, the peace framework will include exclusive and long-lasting US development rights to a major transit corridor through the South Caucasus. The route is to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), the agency wrote on Thursday, citing anonymous officials.

TRIPP will be operated according to Armenian law, and the US will sublet the land to a consortium for management, Reuters said.

Baku had previously proposed creating a 'Zangezur corridor' through Armenia's Syunik Province to connect the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan - which borders Turkey - to mainland Azerbaijan. Yerevan had long resisted the idea.

Last month, Spanish news outlet Periodista Digitalreportedthat Armenia had quietly agreed to hand over a strategic corridor on its territory to the US. Yerevan then officially denied the report, calling it "an element of hybrid warfare and manipulative propaganda."

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Pashinyan has increasingly had to crack down on dissent back home, faced with protests sparked by the pro-Western leader's handover of key Armenian border villages to Baku, which many Armenians saw as a betrayal of national interests.

(RT.com)