The United States and Armenia on Tuesday signed an agreement forming a “strategic partnership commission”, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken said marked "a significant milestone" in the relationship between the two countries and will "contribute to a more resilient, a more peaceful, a more secure, a more independent South Caucasus," TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.
The move has taken many observers by surprise given Russia's incresing efforts to keep the West out of the South Caucasus.
Azerbaijan, Armenia's long-standing rival, has recently announced the end of its participation in both the Washington and Brussels-mediated peace process.
White all eyes were focused on the situation in Georgia in light of ongoing crackdown by pro-russian Georgian Dream regime on pro-Western protests following the latest disputed elections, which triggered U.S. sanctions against the ruling party leaders, Washington and Yerevan were quietly negotiating a strengthening of the United States’ commitment to the region, two former senior U.S. officials in charge of the Caucasus diplomacy, told TURAN's Washuington correspondent.
Tuesday's agreement was signed at a meeting at the State Department between Blinken and Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.
The Commission will look for ways to build ties in areas from defense to the economy to democracy, Blinken said.
The US is “working with Armenia in the realm of security and defense, and in particular, to support its efforts to assert its independence and sovereignty over its own territory,” the Secretary added at a signing ceremony.
“We are increasingly strong partners, and I think that is for the good of both of our countries, as well as the good of the region and beyond,” he said.
Armenia, still formally an ally of Russia through the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, recently suspended participation over what it called a failure by Mocow to provide sufficient security assistance. Russia, in its part, accused the U.S. of "never playing a stabilizing role in the South Caucasus,” as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it on Tuesday.
As for concrete measures of U.S. role, Blinken said of Tuesday agreement that Washington would send a team to Armenia to provide expertise on strengthening border security. The U.S. will also start negotiations with Armenia on civilian nuclear cooperation, and Yerevan will formally join a longstanding US-led coalition on defeating ISIS.
Mirzoyan also saluted the agreement as well as the U.S' engagement in promoting a durable and lasting peace in the region, saying that a stable and prosperous South Caucasus "is in the interest of all regional actors and the broader international community."
Yes some observers, such as Richard Kauzlarich, the former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, remain skeptical regarding the significance of U.S.-Armenian agreement for the region. "Under the circumstances of the U.S. presidential transition, it has even less value than under normal conditions," he told TURAN.
"... Azerbaijan's objective of alienating the U.S. is no surprise. It has been the policy of the Aliev regime throughout the Biden Administration. Washington loses nothing by signing this agreement with Armenia," Kauzlarich, who served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to Azerbaijan (1994–1997), told TURAN.
"The Baku regime hopes that Trump will have a more pro-Azerbaijan position than Biden. That remains to be seen," he concluded.
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