Greece's Mitsotakis says EU leaders close to gas price cap deal

ATHENS (Reuters) - European Union leaders are "close to" imposing a natural gas price cap, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on ahead of talks on tackling high energy prices in Brussels on Thursday.

"I hope that after many months of consultation we will be able to finalize our decisions either today or next Monday at the latest," Mitsotakis said as he arrived at the meeting.

"We are close to being able to impose a ceiling on the price of natural gas... I believe that, one way or another, we will find the necessary majorities in order to move in this direction," he said.

Mitsotakis added it was "absolutely necessary" that Europe "sends clear signal to the markets that it is not going to allow the instrumentalization of natural gas by Russia."

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)