President Donald Trump will host the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Friday as he looks to secure one more peace deal under his belt following fighting that reignited in 2020.
"I look forward to hosting the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, at the White House tomorrow for a Historic Peace Summit," Trump said in a Thursday night social media post.
"President Aliyev AND Prime Minister Pashinyan will join me at the White House for an official Peace Signing Ceremony," he added. "The United States will also sign Bilateral Agreements with both Countries to pursue Economic opportunities together, so we can fully unlock the potential of the South Caucasus Region."
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Despite the president's comments, experts familiar with the ongoing negotiations have told Fox News Digital that the leaders are not expected to sign a formalized peace agreement, but rather a letter of intent following more than a year of negotiations.
However, even as an official peace agreement is not expected to be signed, the meeting is still viewed as a major win for not only regional stability, but for Trump as well.
"I believe they've had a significant position in this whole process," Matias Perttula, director of Save Armenia, told Fox News Digital. "We just returned from Armenia over the last week [where] we had several government meetings, including with the national security advisor, the president of Armenia and a couple other ministries, and from what we can tell the engagement from the Trump administration has been a lot more robust than the Biden administration."
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are each expected to meet with Trump prior to signing a pledge for peace between the two nations, which have been embroiled in, at times, brutal conflict since the late 1980s.
The conflict largely centered around the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a mountainous area in Azerbaijan with a majority-Armenian population, but which declared independence in 1991.
While Armenia, along with the international community, never formally recognized the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic as an independent state, it became its chief financial and military backer.
The territory assumed a de facto role in Armenia until Azerbaijani forces overwhelmed the republic in a swift campaign in September 2023, prompting mass evacuations of ethnic Armenians before it was then dissolved on Jan. 1, 2024.
This region is expected to remain a major issue in the ongoing negotiations.
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Though both nations announced in March that they had reached a consensus on finalizing a peace deal, several factors surrounding the mountainous area have prevented a finalized agreement from being reached, as witnessed in the July meeting between the leaders when they met in the UAE but failed to find a resolution.
Chief among Azerbaijan’s demands is that Armenia should amend its constitution and remove all references to the Nagorno-Karabakh territory. Though this demand is not a simple request that just Pashinyan can agree to as it would require a national referendum.
"There's no legal consequence whatsoever," Perttula told Fox News Digital, explaining that both Armenian and American legal experts have refuted the demand as inconsequential, and therefore should not serve as a precursor to reaching a formalized peace deal.
"There needs to be a real consideration for the right of return for the 120,000 Armenian Christians that were forced off the lands of Nagorno-Karabakh that has been their ancestral homeland for centuries," Perttula added. "I think that needs to be a key point in terms of formalizing this whole peace agreement."
"We want peace at the end of the day," he added. "We want peace and normalization."
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Trump, while on the campaign trail, highlighted the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and accused then-Vice President Kamala Harris of doing "NOTHING as 120,000 Armenian Christians were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced."
Trump said he would "work to stop the violence and ethnic cleansing, and we will restore PEACE between Armenia and Azerbaijan."
Trump has repeatedly championed his push to end conflict across the globe and in June celebrated a peace agreement that the U.S. helped broker between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda with an Oval Office signing.
"In a few short months, we’ve now achieved peace between India and Pakistan, India and Iran, and the DRC and Rwanda, and a couple of others, also," Trump said during the event.
The president – who has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as leaders from Pakistan and Cambodia – has on several occasions argued his credentials should be recognized under the international award that has been granted to four other U.S. presidents.
In a February meeting with Netanyahu, Trump said, "They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me."
The White House last week lobbied for the president to win the award come December when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
