US Vice President J.D. Vance, his wife Usha, son Vibek, and daughter Mirabelle were welcomed on the red carpet today with an honor guard and a delegation of state officials at the airport in Yerevan, Armenia.
No American vice president or president has ever visited that country while in office.
Vance arrived in Yerevan after four days with his family at the Winter Olympics in Milan, and his departure for Azerbaijan is planned for tomorrow.
President Donald Trump's administration is seeking to implement a US-brokered agreement aimed at ending Armenia's decades-long conflict with Azerbaijan.
Vance is scheduled to meet with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who signed an agreement at the White House in August aimed at reopening key transportation routes with Azerbaijan.
At that meeting, the representatives of the states signed agreements reaffirming their commitment to signing a peace agreement. The text of the agreement was signed by the foreign ministers, which means preliminary approval, but the agreement still needs to be signed by the leaders of the countries and ratified by the parliaments.
Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are part of President Donald Trump's new Peace Council. The body was originally intended to oversee a Gaza ceasefire plan but has expanded in size and ambition. Trump plans to convene the first meeting of the Council in Washington this month.
The agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics, envisages the creation of an important transit corridor called the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity", which is to connect Azerbaijan and its autonomous enclave of Nakhchivan, separated by a 32-kilometer-wide strip of Armenian territory.
That part of the territory has been an obstacle to resolving the conflict that has lasted almost four decades over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The area had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994. In a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan regained control of parts of the area and its surroundings.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a blitzkrieg in which the separatist authorities were forced to capitulate. When Azerbaijan regained full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, most of the 120.000 ethnic Armenian residents fled to Armenia.
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