Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi arrived in Armenia on Saturday, on an announced visit, as the country is rocked by violent clashes on the border with Azerbaijan, AFP reports.

Pelosi, who is the highest-ranking US official to visit Yerevan since the small Caucasian nation gained independence in 1991, called her visit “a powerful symbol of the United States’ strong commitment to a peaceful, prosperous and democratic, stable and secure life”. Caucasian region”.

The three-day visit “will play an important role in ensuring our security”, the Speaker of the Parliament of Armenia, Alen Simonyan, told the media before his arrival.

The US official’s visit comes at a time when the region, particularly strategic for the transportation of hydrocarbons from the Caspian Sea, is suffering from friction between the influence of Turkey, which supports Azerbaijan, and Russia, which is theoretically the guarantor of the security of Armenia, where it has a military base, but which is very blocked in Ukraine.

The West is involved in the peace process through the Minsk Group of the OSCE.

More than 200 people have been killed in recent fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, with both sides blaming each other. The fighting broke out on Tuesday and ended with international mediation on Thursday evening.

It is an unprecedented escalation in 2020 that threatens to derail the fragile peace process between the two rival Caucasian countries, which have fought two wars – in 2020 and in the 1990s – over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave in Azerbaijan. .

Nancy Pelosi found herself at the center of geopolitical tensions between China and the US in August when she visited Taiwan, defying warnings from Beijing, which claims the island.