Moscow 'cautious' on US deal

MOSCOW: Russia cautiously welcomed a US-brokered draft deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday, but Moscow’s regional ally Iran rejected the idea of a new border corridor backed by President Donald Trump.

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The two former Soviet republics signed a peace deal in Washington on Friday to end a decades-long conflict, though the fine print and binding nature of the deal remained unclear.

The US-brokered agreement includes establishing a transit corridor through Armenia to connect Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan, a longstanding demand of Baku.

The United States would have development rights for the corridor — dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” — in the strategic and resource-rich region.

But Russia’s ally and the warring parties’ southern neighbour Tehran said it would not allow the creation of asuch a corridor running along the Iranian border.

"With the implementation of this plot, the security of the South Caucasus will be endangered," Akbar Velayati, an advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the Tasnim news agency.

The planned corridor was “an impossible notion and will not happen", while the area would become “a graveyard for Trump's mercenaries”, he added.