U.S. House of Representative members, Jackie Speier (CA-14), Judy Chu (CA-27) and Frank Pallone (NJ-06), are scheduled to pay a one-week visit to Armenia and Artsakh on October 1st to discuss relations between the two nations, reported the Voice of America’s Armenian service report.

Congresswoman Judy Chu is looking forward to her visit to Artsakh. “I particularly want to visit Artsakh in order to get acquainted with the situation, to see what is happening there and to be able to provide even more serious support to the establishment of peace in Artsakh in the future.”

Congresswoman Judy Chu’s initiative, which was adopted by the majority of the House of Representatives nearly a month ago, envisages allocating $4,000,000 for implementation of the Royce-Engel proposal to strengthen the ceasefire in Artsakh. The funds will be used to deploy special equipment along the entire length of the line of contact of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh to find out which party violates the ceasefire.

Congressman Frank Pallone, founder and co-chair of the Congressional Armenian Caucus, thinks their visit is particularly important as it is the first visit by American lawmakers to Armenia since the Velvet Revolution.

“One of the reasons for our visit is that our group wants to support the new government and parliament of Armenia,” said the Congressman.

According to Pallone, although the U.S. State Department advised U.S. lawmakers to avoid visiting Artsakh, the delegation decided to make the trip anyway. As for his visit to Armenia, the Congressman plans to discuss the expansion of cooperation in the political and trade-economic spheres with their Armenian counterparts.

“We are very excited about the Velvet Revolution,” said Congressman Pallone. “Armenia is on the way to becoming a more democratic country. We are inspired by the political will of the new government to fight corruption, implement judicial reforms and establish the rule of law in the country.”