(Reuters) – A senior Armenian official said on Sunday there was a possibility a peace deal could be signed with neighboring Azerbaijan by the end of 2023, ending a decades-long conflict, the Russian news agency TASS said.
Moscow, Washington and the European Union are separately trying to help ensure permanent peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have fought two wars in the past 30 years over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
TASS quoted Armen Grigoryan, the secretary of the Armenian Security Council, as saying on national television that the negotiations were very intense.
“If we can maintain this intensity and there is strong support from the international community to make progress, then there is a chance of having a peace treaty by the end of the year,” he said.
In 2020, Azerbaijan seized control of areas controlled by ethnic Armenians in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but is populated primarily by ethnic Armenians.
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Both sides routinely accuse the other of breaking a ceasefire agreed to in 2020.
Last week, TASS said that European Council President Charles Michel, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would meet in July.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Grant McCool)
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