Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian committed himself to such an arrangement during talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held at the White House last August. The working group is tasked with helping to implement these and other U.S.-Armenian understandings reached during the summit.
A third session of the group co-headed by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sonata Coulter and Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanian took place via video link on Wednesday.
“The Working Group members exchanged views on steps aimed at strengthening strategic partnership between Armenia and the U.S., including economic cooperation, energy, critical and emerging technologies,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The statement made no mention of the planned Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) which is due to connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s strategic Syunik region bordering Iran.
According to a joint U.S.-Armenian “implementation framework” signed in January, a special company controlled by the U.S. government will build a railway, a road, energy supply lines and other infrastructure along the Armenian-Iranian border and manage them for at least 49 years. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said late last year that work on that infrastructure will start this summer.
Pashinian told reporters on March 12, however, that it will likely be delayed by the ongoing war in the Middle East. He said the TRIPP is “not a priority for the U.S. administration today.”
Iranian officials spoke out against the transit arrangement in the months leading up to the war. They feared that it could undermine Armenian control of the border and lead to U.S. security presence there. Some observers believe that Tehran will now be even more opposed to the TRIPP even if the war is stopped in the coming weeks.