Azerbaijan and Armenia are moving toward a landmark deal to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict next year, Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Thursday.

"If the positive pace achieved in the negotiating process ... is continued next year, then we can count on a rather swift final agreement of the basic principles for resolution [of the conflict] and the working out of the text for a peace agreement," he told reporters.

Fifteen years of mediation have failed to produce a peace deal on the Armenian-populated mountain territory, which is at the heart of a key transit region for oil and gas to the West.

But mediators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported progress in talks last month between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan.

Tensions over the mountain region have been rising, with oil-producing Azerbaijan angry at a deal between ally Turkey and Armenia to open their border 16 years after Ankara closed it in solidarity with Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh war