DONALD TRUMP hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House today at a summit billed as ending decades of conflict — and paving the way for a US-controlled transport corridor.

The ex-Soviet countries have been in conflict since the collapse of the USSR, when they fought over territory including the then ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has been accused of ethnically cleansing the territory, whose population fled when it reconquered it in a surprise assault in 2023.

A transport corridor called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity will connect Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan across Armenian territory. Armenia has long feared that Azerbaijan, backed by its ally Turkey, might seek to seize parts of Armenian territory to link up with Nakhchivan, while Turkey has been keen for a transit route in the area.

Railway lines and oil and gas pipelines would be laid, in a development project over which the United States would exercise leasing rights under the plans.

Whether the US would have a military presence is unclear, though the route has been called a deliberate bid to obstruct a sanctions-proof rail and sea route from India to Russia via Afghanistan and Iran.

Armenia had traditionally looked to Russia to protect its interests against Azerbaijan and Turkey, but has cooled on the relationship since Russian peacekeepers failed to intervene in the Azerbaijani conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh two years ago, either because the Russian military was overstretched in Ukraine or because it prioritised appeasing Turkey, the only Nato member to have remained friendly to Russia through the Ukraine war, over supporting Armenia. Armenia suspended its membership of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation after the conflict.

A US-brokered peace and US-owned transit route in the Caucasus will be seen as a setback for both Russia and Iran.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are also expected to sign a number of economic agreements with Mr Trump.

“Many leaders have tried to end the war, with no success, until now, thanks to TRUMP,” Mr Trump boasted on social media.