US, Armenia sign partnership agreement

YEREVAN:

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan signed a strategic partnership agreement in Yerevan on Tuesday, less than two weeks before parliamentary elections in the South Caucasus country.

Rubio's visit comes as Russia has threatened to exert economic pressure on Yerevan for its growing ties to the West by raising prices Armenia pays for Russian gas if the country turns away from integration with Moscow

On June 7, Armenia votes in an election pitting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's Civil Contract party against an array of opposition parties, many of which are pro-Russian.

Rubio and Mirzoyan

also signed a framework agreement on critical minerals and another on cooperation on a proposed 43-km (27-mile) transit corridor across southern Armenia

that would give Azerbaijan a direct route to its

exclave of Nakhchivan

and into Turkey, Baku's closest ally.

Dubbed the "Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP)", the corridor is a key part of a peace agreement reached last August between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been at war on-and-off since the late 1980s. No formal peace deal has been signed.

The route would better connect Asia to Europe - bypassing Russia and Iran - at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed interest in critical minerals deals with resource-rich Central Asian countries to the east of the South Caucasus region. The mining of iron, copper and zinc and other minerals is also a major sector of Armenia's economy.

"We are going to be able to work together to make sure that both of our

countries, both of our economies, are going to have reliable access

to these critical minerals," Rubio said at the

signing ceremony on Tuesday.