US officials make frequent visits to South Caucasus to promote peace and trade, says Eurasianet
The United States is making a diplomatic push in the Caucasus to promote peace and commerce. But the underlying aim of a bevy of visits by top US officials appears to be catalyzing growth of Middle Corridor trade with Central Asia, Eurasianet writes.
The publication states that over the past week, four high-level American diplomats have visited either Azerbaijan, Armenia or both for talks on a variety of topics, including reinvigorating stalled efforts to finalize a peace agreement, interconnectivity, religious freedom and nuclear energy.
As noted, perhaps the most prominent recent American visitor to the region, however, was Steve Daines, a Republican senator from Montana and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who met with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, conveying a Trump administration message that the two countries “should sign a peace agreement to bring stability and prosperity to the region.” According to Azerbaijani accounts of his visit to Baku, Daines appeared to have another goal in mind – fostering a thaw in US-Azerbaijani relations to accelerate the expansion of the Middle Corridor trade route with Central Asia.
US-Azerbaijani relations experienced a deep chill during the Biden administration, which assailed Baku’s expansive crackdown on political and press freedoms. Daines delivered a letter from President Trump that appeared to say trade, not rights, is now Washington’s primary concern. While Daines sought to mend fences with Azerbaijan, a stopover in Georgia on May 30 appeared to reinforce a hardening US stance toward Georgian Dream government in Tbilisi, which has steered the country out of a pro-Western orbit over the past 18 months.
In Tbilisi, Daines met with Salome Zourabichvili, the leader of the anti-government resistance, along with other opposition politicians. A brief statement released via X by the US Embassy in Georgia indicated Daines also met with government officials to “discuss Georgia’s strategic importance to the United States, concerns over recent arrests of opposition leaders, and the need for a pro-Western Georgia to ensure prosperity, progress, and stability in the region.”
