Lavrov: Azerbaijan and Armenia close to final agreement

The positions of Azerbaijan and Armenia on the peace treaty between them and on a number of items that were discussed today, have been brought closer to a common vision, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following a trilateral meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia in Moscow.

According to Report's Russian bureau, Lavrov said a peace treaty is a separate topic of negotiations: "The parties have begun to work on it, and it is now being actively discussed, including with the involvement of other mediators. The Armenian and Azerbaijani ministers traveled to Washington, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were in Brussels a week ago. The work on a peace treaty is, of course, fundamental, but our partners today confirmed that it is difficult to move forward on specific aspects of a peace treaty without resolving issues of delimitation, unblocking transport and economic communications," he said.

Lavrov also noted that a meeting of a trilateral group led by vice-premiers on the issues of unblocking transport communications is expected next week: "We hope that a positive result will be achieved there. The parties are already close to a final agreement."