Pashinian pledged to give the United States exclusive rights to the corridor during talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held at the White House on August 8.
Key details of what will be called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) remain unknown. A joint declaration by Aliyev and Pashinian makes only a general reference to the TRIPP while a relevant U.S.-Armenian memorandum also signed on August 8 has still not been made public. The memorandum reportedly calls for a long-term U.S. lease on the transit routes.
“We didn’t talk about those details,” Pashinian told reporters. “The agreements are what has been publicized.”
“There are many ideas about how to ensure all that and those regulations will be worked out from those ideas,” he said without elaborating. “That is a subject of upcoming negotiations.”
Azerbaijan has said all along that the transit of people and cargo through Armenia’s Syunik province must be exempt from Armenian border controls. Aliyev said on July 20 that Azerbaijanis travelling to from Nakhichevan “should not see the faces of Armenian border guards or anyone else.”
A spokeswoman for Pashinian rejected the demand as a “hidden territorial claim” to Armenia. However, the Armenian premier himself stated on July 16 that modern technology could be used to exclude physical contact between Armenian officers and Azerbaijani travelers.
Pashinian remained vague on this subject on Thursday, saying that he is ready to accept any “simplification” of border crossing and customs procedures that would not call into question Armenia’s territorial integrity.
Armenian opposition leaders maintain that the TRIPP arrangement would undermine Armenian sovereignty over Syunik and lead to the kind of an extraterritorial corridor that has been sought by Baku. Some of them have challenged Pashinian to publicize the U.S.-Armenian memorandum.
The transit corridor would run along Armenia’s vital border with Iran. Not surprisingly, Tehran has expressed serious concern over the preliminary U.S.-Armenian deal.
Pashinian clearly failed to dispel the Iranian concerns when he met with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian in Yerevan on Tuesday. Pezeshkian repeated Tehran’s opposition to any “outsourcing of regional issues” to outside powers after the talks.
