A top EU diplomat on April 11 said he wants to see “genuine, substantial negotiations” between Armenia and Azerbaijan leading to a peace treaty, agreements on border delimitation, and opening of transport links.

Toivo Klaar, the EU’s special representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, told RFE/RL that Armenia and Azerbaijan could move forward in the peace process faster if conditions are right.

“It should not take that long to arrive at a positive outcome if the political will is there, if the commitment is there. And that is what we want to work for together with Armenia, together with Azerbaijan, that indeed we get from the point where we are to a positive outcome,” Klaar said.

Klaar added that Brussels supports the Turkey-Armenia normalization process, and he hopes the special envoys for normalization talks designated by Yerevan and Ankara will meet soon.

“My hope would be that in the near future this process would indeed move forward and show results for the sake of Armenia, for the sake of Turkey, for the sake of the region,” he said.

As for Armenia’s possible membership in the EU in the future, Klaar said it depends on political decisions made in Yerevan, Brussels, and the member states.

“There are so many elements related to this. Certainly what we are seeing right now is a strengthening of relations between the European Union and Armenia, which corresponds to the interests of the European Union, which corresponds to the interests of Armenia. How this relationship will evolve, we will have to see,” he said.

Compared to only a few years ago, the relationship between the EU and Armenia has evolved significantly, he added, but it’s too early to say where things will end up.

Armenia is only starting to catch up on some elements of the process that it could have achieved 10 years ago, he said.

“We are catching up on maybe lost time that we have had in our relationship,” the diplomat said.

Armenia has long been a close ally of Russia but in recent months has taken steps to distance itself from that alliance, apparently angered by what it saw as a lack of support from Moscow during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Armenian government has also criticized Russian peacekeepers deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh of failing to stop Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in September last year that ended with Baku regaining control over the breakaway region that for three decades had been under ethnic Armenians’ control.

In other signs of Armenia’s move to distance itself from Russia, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said last month that his country had frozen its membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on April 10 that Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will not attend a meeting on April 12 of his counterparts from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a Moscow-led grouping of former Soviet republics that was set up immediately after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The CSTO has been at the heart of Armenia’s turn away from Moscow. The Pashinian government has long criticized the CSTO for its “failure to respond to the security challenges” facing Armenia.

Asked whether Armenia’s membership in organizations like the Russian-led CSTO was an obstacle to the country’s further integration with the EU, Klaar said: “Right now we have to look at what the Armenian government and what the Armenian people want to do, where they want to go, and how they see best the development of our relations.”

A meeting last week in Brussels between Pashinian, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell represented “a real strengthening of EU-Armenia relations,” Klaar said, adding that the United States is there to help support the resilience of Armenia.

At the meeting the EU unveiled an aid package for Armenia in the amount of 270 million euros (about $290 million) to be made available over the next four years, with the United States pledging $65 million in additional “development assistance” to Armenia this year.