“Multiple sources confirm to me that Armenia and Azerbaijan are poised to announce their intention for peace later this week in Washington,” Alex Raufoglu, an Azerbaijani journalist based in the U.S. capital, said in an X post earlier in the day.
“Trump is expected to host both Nikol Pashinian and Ilham Aliyev in the White House on Friday, sources tell me,” he wrote without giving further details.
There have been no official statements to that effect yet by the White House or the U.S. State Department.
Pashinian’s office said that it “can neither confirm nor deny” the information “at the moment.”
“At this point, as you know, we have not released any official statement, and we therefore ask you to consider the information about the visit [to Washington] confirmed only after the official statement,” it told the Armenpress news agency.
There was no immediate reaction from Baku. Pashinian and Aliyev most recently met in Abu Dhabi on July 10. They discussed, in particular, the possibility of initialing an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty finalized by the two sides in March. Baku continues to make the signing of the treaty conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution.
Speaking a week after the Abu Dhabi talks, Trump stated that Armenia and Azerbaijan are “pretty close” to striking a peace deal. But he did not elaborate.
Also on the agenda of the talks was a U.S. proposal to let an American company manage the transit of people and cargo from Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province.
Pashinian has indicated his readiness to accept the proposed arrangement strongly opposed by his domestic critics. They say that it would undermine Armenian sovereignty over Syunik and satisfy Azerbaijan’s demands for an extraterritorial corridor to Nakhichevan.
Washington has also proposed a 100-year U.S. lease on the corridor. Pashinian and his political allies have made conflicting statements on the idea.