House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a delegation of lawmakers visited Armenia in the midst of fresh clashes with neighboring Azerbaijan that killed more than 200 troops, according to U.S. officials.
While speaking in Yerevan, Armenia, Pelosi condemned the “illegal and deadly attacks by Azerbaijan on Armenian territory” that triggered border fighting. “We strongly condemn those attacks,” she said beside Armenian parliamentary speaker Alen Simonyan.
The two countries agreed to a ceasefire last week that has lasted three days so far. But the fighting, Pelosi claimed, “was initiated by the Azeris and there has to be recognition of that.”
Pelosi is the highest-ranking American official to visit Armenia in several decades and the first to do so since the country became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. Azerbaijan was also a Soviet republic before the bloc’s dissolution….