Peace in the South Caucuses | Narek Mkrtchyan

As I had mentioned, tomorrow, on August 8th, we are celebrating the signing of the peace plan between Armenia and neighboring, neighboring Azerbaijan, which, if anybody of our listeners has been following this region, uh, less than a year ago, that would probably seemed as something of a dream.

Um, this has been a decades long c- conflict that is happening between the two countries, and to be able to see a secession of hostilities is a major accomplishment, a huge feat to both of your countries and also for the U- United States for helping to broker this deal.

But I'm curious, from your perspective, what opportunities does this open up for Armenia and for the region?

Uh, so yeah, you're right.

Tomorrow we'll be, um, celebrating the first anniversary of the Washington peace deal.

So, you know, more than 30 years, three decades, Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting each other, and, uh, only last year President Trump could manage to broker the peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

And the Washington Declaration actually not only, uh, brought a new peace chapter in our region, but also this has created a new kind of opportunity for the bilateral ga- engagement between Armenia and, and, and the United States of America.

So, uh, the ideology of peace, uh, became an important driving force for transformations.

Uh, and when we were talking to, uh, our people about the importance of peace, so we always mention the importance of peace as a precondition, a precondition for prosperity, precondition for, uh, economic development and for, uh, regional connectivity.

And now I can say we are approaching to the first anniversary, and we have a lot of progress done.

And, uh, when you look at the projects that we, like, uh, derived from the peace deal, you can see that really the peace is going to transform the region and is going to bring different regions together to create new kind of synergies and new partnership, which will be beneficial not only for Armenia, Azerbaijan or the South Caucasus, but this, this will be, uh, bringing actually a lot of, uh, values to the United States of America as well.

Do you think that the people of Armenia are already starting to feel the benefits and experience the benefits of this new era of peace?

Sure.

First of all, uh, peace is a new reality.

You know, uh, for a society who lived, um, 30 years in a... more than 30 years in a conflictual situation, of course, not every year, uh, it was like active-

Sure

... uh, conflictual situation.

But, uh, uh, psychologically thinking, this is a new reality, and now people feel that, uh, and, and they benefit from the peace, having new kind of economic, uh, projects and the partnerships, and we are very happy that United States of America is a key partner in this partnership.

And from the Armenia's perspective, you know, we value these relations, and we value partnership.

So we value more partnership than charity.

So we want the projects with the US after the peace deal, which will be bringing benefits not only to Armenia, but the American nation, and we already have such kind of benefits.

You know, uh, American companies where Armenia society in US, like the diaspora Armenians, played key role.

They've been changing the ecosystem of technology in Armenia, and now that ecosystem contributing to the new projects and attracting new projects from America, from US.

And- Literally, uh, tomorrow on the 8th of August, uh, so there will be, mm, uh, ribbon-cutting ceremony for one of the biggest, uh, US projects in Armenia, which is, uh, AI factory, $4 billion investment.

So this is not only about like production or, uh, computing data intelligence, this is also about contribution to the ecosystem.