South Caucasus opens roads, 907th amendment puts up barriers

The August trilateral summit in Washington with the participation of the leaders of the USA, Azerbaijan and Armenia is truly a turning point. Many observers compared the handshake between Aliyev and Pashinyan that took place in the Oval Office of the White House with similar gestures that occurred in September 1978 at Camp David between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin and in September 1993 in Oslo between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. And while in the first case, peace between Israel and Egypt proved to be lasting, the Palestinian intifada that began in 2000 effectively buried the nascent peace process.

This is stated in a new issue of the Caliber.Az YouTube channel.

"Against this background, the further preservation of Section 907 of the US 'Freedom Support Act' looks not just like an anachronism, but an outright absurdity. This amendment, adopted in a completely different geopolitical and regional reality, was initially one-sided and politically motivated. Now, when there is no 'blockade', no military actions, no refusal to dialogue, its existence comes into direct contradiction with the processes taking place on the ground.

This seems all the more strange given that President Donald Trump himself spoke out in favor of repealing Section 907, recognizing its inconsistency with current realities and the interests of the United States. In conditions where Washington declares support for peace, stability, and economic development in the region, maintaining such a restrictive mechanism undermines confidence in American policy as such.

As is rightly noted both in the region itself and beyond, with the ongoing peace process, normalization of relations, and opening of communications, the continued existence of this amendment has neither moral nor political justification. If the South Caucasus is indeed entering an era of peace and cooperation, then the international community should not cling to relics of the past, but rather contribute to consolidating positive changes. The repeal of Section 907 would be an important, albeit symbolic, but extremely necessary step in this direction. And now the floor is open to American legislators," the authors of the story note.