Azerbaijan and Armenia are on course to make a landmark deal to end the long-standing dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh next year, Russia’s foreign minister said Thursday.
The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been negotiating on Nagorno-Karabakh under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, but little progress has been made in the peace talks.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters Thursday that if the current pace continued, a peace deal was likely, daily Hürriyet reported on its Web site, citing the Reuters news agency.
His remarks came a day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Azerbaijani President Ýlham Aliyev in Paris. In a written statement, the French presidency said the leaders had agreed to expand bilateral relations and trade volume between the two countries and expressed their wish to develop a “strategic partnership.”
The topic of Nagorno-Karabakh was also discussed during the meeting, the French presidency said, but gave no further detail.
