(FILE) Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev (R) and Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (L) attend a plenary session in the outreach/BRICS Plus format at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, 24 October 2024. EFE/EPA/MAXIM SHEMETOV / POOL

Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders to meet with Trump to seal peace deal

Baku/Tbilisi, Aug 6 (EFE).- The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan are to travel to the United States this week to meet with its president, Donald Trump, with the aim of signing a peace agreement.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry confirmed the trilateral meeting in Washington between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Trump.

The meeting is expected to conclude with a peace agreement after Baku’s seizure of control of Karabakh in 2023.

According to the US, the three leaders will issue a joint statement from Washington on Aug. 8 at 4pm local time.

Before the trilateral meeting, Trump will meet with the Armenian leader followed by Azerbaijan’s president.

Pashinian and Aliyev earlier met in July in Abu Dhabi, where they discussed the peace process and agreed to continue contacts.

In March, the Armenian foreign ministry said it had agreed with the Azerbaijani side on the text of the peace treaty and that Yerevan was ready to discuss the proposals for the place of signing the document.

Baku, meanwhile, insisted that the agreement was possible if Armenia fulfilled a number of conditions, such as the end of bombings on the border and amending its Constitution to exclude existing territorial claims, the existence of which Pashinian has denied.

The trilateral meeting will take place amid tensions between the three countries and Russia, which appears to have lost the role of the main mediator in the region that it held since the fall of the USSR in 1991. EFE

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