“We confirm that we are interested in participating in the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) project,” Tokayev said after talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian held in the capital Astana.
The transit corridor will “open up great opportunities for both countries,” Tokyaev told a joint news conference. Pashinian welcomed that interest, saying that the TRIPP could significantly boost Armenia’s trade with Kazakhstan which stood, according to Armenian government data, at a modest $60 million in the first nine months of this year.
Pashinian, U.S. President Donald Trump and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reached an agreement on the TRIPP during trilateral talks held in Washington in August. Crucial practical modalities of the transit arrangement have yet to be worked out.
Pashinian’s domestic critics maintain that the TRIPP amounts to the kind of an extraterritorial corridor that would compromise Armenian sovereignty over its strategic Syunik province. Aliyev has repeatedly echoed the Armenian opposition claims.
Kazakhstan as well as other ex-Soviet Muslim republics of Central Asia have supported Azerbaijan in the conflict with Armenia despite being nominally allied to the latter through the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization. Both Tokayev and his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev have repeatedly congratulated Azerbaijan on its victory in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Tokayev on Friday again thanked Aliyev for letting his country export 1,000 tons of wheat to Armenia via Azerbaijan earlier this month. Pashinian’s government portrayed the inaugural shipment, carried out by rail, as another evidence of “peace” established between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The government quickly found itself on the defensive when it emerged that Armenia imported low-grade Kazakh wheat which is mainly used as animal feed. Opposition figures and other critics rang alarm bells, saying that it must not be used for bread production.
The outcry led Armenia’s Food Safety Inspectorate to pledge to conduct laboratory tests on the imported wheat. The government agency reported on November 13 that no “harmful organisms” were found in it.