Constitutional law specialist and Strong Armenia party member Gohar Meloyan says the TRIPP project is being carried out in a way that leaves Armenia with as little participation, revenue and influence as possible. She outlined that position in a Facebook post.
Meloyan also said that, by her assessment, 74% of the road’s revenue would go to the United States rather than Armenia.
According to her, the most unfavorable part for Armenia in the Azerbaijani foreign minister’s latest statement was not the renewed use of the term “Zangezur Corridor” for a route crossing Armenia’s sovereign territory, but the wording that “a 42-kilometer section of the Nakhchivan-Turkey route passes through Armenian territory.”
Meloyan argued that this refers to a new international highway and railway being built in the South Caucasus that would compete with the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route. In her reading, the TRIPP section running through Syunik Province would not enter Armenia after Nakhichevan and continue through Yerevan, but would instead connect Nakhichevan directly to Turkey.
She said this means the international route is being designed and implemented so that as little of it as possible runs through Armenia, leaving the country with a limited role, lower revenue and reduced leverage.
Meloyan further argued that Azerbaijan will not share revenue from the route crossing its own territory, while Armenia, unlike Azerbaijan, has undertaken an obligation to ensure unobstructed passage. In that context, she also referred to hardline statements by the Azerbaijani leadership about the road running through Armenian territory.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who arrived in Yerevan on May 26, and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan initialed the Framework Agreement on Strategic Cooperation between Armenia and the United States concerning the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP project. The document was formally signed on June 1.
