BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 8. President of the United States Donald Trump has delivered a press statement at the White House, Trend reports.
Statement by President Donald Trump
- Thank you very much. It's a great honor.
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. It is a big, beautiful honor to welcome everyone to the White House for this very historic peace summit between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It's really a great thrill for me. I love seeing good people get together, and that's what you have here, two great leaders. I want to congratulate these two visionary people, Prime Minister Pashinyan and President Aliyev, for coming to Washington to sign this momentous Joint Declaration, tremendously important document, and it's been a long time in coming. They were explaining before that so many times they thought they could get there. Never happened, just never happened. I also want to thank Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff and their teams at the State Department, and I see that we have Chris Wright outside and Senator Steve Daines sitting right here. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. And Steve, thank you very much. And we have some other wonderful dignitaries, including the dignitaries from your country, but they provided tremendous diplomatic assistance.
For more than 35 years, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought a bitter conflict that resulted in tremendous suffering for both nations. They suffered gravely for so many years, many tried to find a resolution, including the European Union. The Russians worked very hard on it – never happened. Sleepy Joe Biden tried, but you know what happened there? And many other countries tried, and they were unsuccessful, but with this accord, we've finally succeeded in making peace, and we just left the Oval Office where we signed voluminous documents and very important elements to the agreement.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are committing to stop all fighting forever, open up commerce, travel and diplomatic relations and respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity. So importantly, and I just spent a lot of time with these two men. I think they're going to have a great relationship. This declaration establishes what they are calling a great honor for me, I didn't ask for this the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, which is a special transit area that will allow Azerbaijan to get full access to its territory of Nakhchivan, well, fully respecting Armenia's sovereignty, so they're going to be able to really live and work together. And it's amazing. So that's a very important territory, I guess, very special territory to you and to you, and now they work together. Armenia is also creating an exclusive partnership with the United States to develop this corridor, which could extend for up to 99 years. And then they promise, in 99 years, they'll extend it, right? You promise, but we anticipate significant infrastructure development and American companies are very anxious to go into these two countries, and they're going to spend a lot of money, which will economically benefit all three of our nations. This is incredibly positive news for the future of the entire region, and it's a very important region, as you know. Additionally, the US is signing a bilateral agreement with both countries to expand cooperation and energy trade and technology, including AI, and in terms of energy. Chris is here representing our country. And there's nobody better than Chris Wright. And Chris, I understand it's very fertile. It's a very fertile area.
We are drilling like we haven't drilled in many years, I guess I could say ever before, and we just started. We're also lifting restrictions on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States of America. The president, that's a big deal, unless, is that important? Yeah, I think so. It was pretty good. They're very happy about that. So am I. As President, my highest aspiration is to bring peace and stability to the world.
So hopefully we can have many more successes. I hope what I could have too many more in this field, because hopefully where we're not going to be seeing too many more wars.
