TBILISI: Armenia and the United States agreed on Monday to cooperate in the civil nuclear sector as Washington sought to bolster ties with a former close ally of Russia, months after Washington brokered a peace agreement in the South Caucasus.<\/p>\n
A statement on the nuclear sector deal was signed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and US Vice President JD Vance, who is on a two-day visit to the country.<\/p>\n
The two said they had completed negotiations on what is known as a 123 Agreement, which allows the \u200cUS to legally license \u200cnuclear technology and equipment to other countries.<\/p>\n
The agreement will \u200callow \u2060up \u200bto $5 \u200cbillion in initial US exports to Armenia, plus an additional $4 billion in longer-term fuel and maintenance contracts, Vance said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis agreement will open a new chapter in the deepening energy partnership between Armenia and the United States,\u201d Pashinyan said at a joint press conference with Vance.<\/p>\n
Long heavily dependent on Russia and Iran for its energy supplies, Armenia is now reviewing proposals from US, Russian, Chinese, French and South Korean companies to construct a new nuclear reactor to replace its sole, aging \u2060Russian-built nuclear power plant, Metsamor.<\/p>\n
No choice has yet been made, but Monday\u2019s announcement paves the way for an American \u200cproject to be selected. That would deal a blow to \u200dRussia, which traditionally has viewed the \u200dSouth Caucasus as its sphere of influence but whose clout there has diminished as a \u200dresult of its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
‘Diversify partners\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cConsidering Armenia\u2019s multiplicity of dependencies on Russia, it is a political priority to diversify partners when it comes to nuclear cooperation,\u201d said Narek Sukiasyan, a political scientist in Yerevan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States seems to be the preference now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s visit comes just six months after \u200bthe Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders signed an agreement at the White House seen as the first step toward peace after nearly 40 years of war.<\/p>\n
Vance \u2060was also seeking to advance the \u201cTrump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP),\u201d a proposed 43-kilometer (27-mile) corridor that would run across southern Armenia and give Azerbaijan a direct route to its exclave of Nakhchivan and in turn to Turkiye, Baku\u2019s close ally.<\/p>\n
The route would better connect Asia to Europe while \u2014 crucially for Washington \u2014 bypassing Russia and Iran at a time when Western countries are keen on diversifying energy and trade routes away from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict.<\/p>\n
The TRIPP corridor, which envisages new or updated rail infrastructure, oil and gas pipelines and fiber-optic cables, would transform the South Caucasus, a region riven by closed borders and longstanding ethnic conflicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not just making peace for Armenia,\u201d Vance said. \u201cWe\u2019re also creating real prosperity for Armenia and \u200cthe United States together.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is set to visit Azerbaijan on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TBILISI: Armenia and the United States agreed on Monday to cooperate in the civil nuclear sector as Washington sought to bolster ties with a former close ally of Russia, months after Washington brokered a peace agreement in the South Caucasus. A statement on the nuclear sector deal was signed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93495,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93476\/revisions\/93495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}