US vice president Vance on peace bid in Azerbaijan after Armenia visit

The visit follows US President Donald Trump's mediation last year of a peace agreement between the historical rivals Baku and Yerevan, which have fought two wars over the Karabakh region.

On Monday, Vance held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Yerevan and he is to meet Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev in Baku.

The visit is expected to advance a flagship transport communications project integrating the two countries into a new east-west trade route.

Azerbaijan seized Karabakh in a 2023 lightning offensive, ending three decades of rule by Armenian separatists.

At a White House summit in August 2025, Trump brokered an agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan that saw the two countries commit to renouncing claims on each other's territory and refrain from using force.

Vance also said that the issue of Armenian separatist leaders imprisoned in Azerbaijan was "certainly going to come up" in talks with Azerbaijani leaders.

Last week, a military court in Baku handed lengthy sentences, including life jail terms, to Armenian separatist leaders in a war crimes trial.

More than 20 Armenian human rights groups sent an open letter urging Vance to help secure the release of Armenian detainees in Azerbaijani jails. Karabakh refugees held a rally in Yerevan with the same demand.

The US State Department said the visit would "advance President Donald Trump's peace efforts and promote the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP)".

The TRIPP is a proposed road-and-rail corridor designed to link Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave, cut off from the mainland by Armenian territory, while integrating the region into a wider east-west trade route connecting Central Asia and the Caspian basin to Europe.

Washington has presented the project as a confidence-building measure following decades of conflict between the two countries.

Azerbaijan sees the opening of regional communications as the main precondition for signing a comprehensive peace treaty with its rival.