Armenian PM: Hotline with Azerbaijan set up after clashes

By AVET DEMOURIAN
Associated Press

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenia’s prime minister says the country has reached an agreement with Azerbaijan to establish a hotline between their defense chiefs after last week’s deadly clashes on their border. Nikol Pashinyan said during an online news conference Tuesday that contacts between Armenian and Azerbaijani officials should become more frequent to “help stabilize the situation, find solutions and try to avoid crises.” Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-old dispute over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that lies within Azerbaijan but was under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.