By Lucy Papachristou

TBILISI (Reuters) -Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday as the bitter rivals work towards a peace deal to resolve nearly four decades of conflict.

The two sides said in March they had agreed on the text of a draft peace agreement, but progress since then has been sporadic and slow.

Here is a look at the history of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the stumbling blocks that remain to inking a peace deal.

WHY ARE ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN IN CONFLICT?

Armenia and Azerbaijan, neighbours in the South Caucasus region, have been locked in conflict since the final years of the Soviet Union over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region at the southern end of the Karabakh mountain range, within Azerbaijan.

The region, known as Artsakh by Armenians, is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but until 2023 its 100,000 inhabitants........

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