By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -When U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the White House on Friday, the meeting will culminate in the signing of a peace framework that includes exclusive U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus, officials told Reuters.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh - an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population - broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

A peace deal could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey and Iran that is criss-crossed by oil and gas pipelines but riven by closed borders and longstanding ethnic........

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