US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has urged the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to engage in dialogue to resolve the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price announced that Blinken, who is on an Asian tour, spoke by phone with the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, and the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev.

Price said that the US Secretary of State assured Prime Minister Pashinyan that the United States is closely monitoring the situation in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.

Price noted that during his talks with the two leaders, Blinken urged the establishment of direct dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve issues related to or arising from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

After a first war that resulted in 30,000 deaths in the early 1990s, in the fall of 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a lightning war to control the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, which split from Azerbaijan with the support of Yerevan.

The last war in 2020 killed about 6,500 people and ended with a Russian-brokered truce.

As part of the armistice agreement, Armenia relinquished large swathes of territory it controlled, and Russia deployed a peacekeeping force of about 2,000 soldiers tasked with monitoring compliance with the fragile truce.

Despite the fragile diplomatic truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan, tension remains high between the two former Soviet republics. Both countries regularly report outbreaks of violence and casualties among soldiers. And last Wednesday, Azerbaijan announced its control of several sites and the destruction of targets in Nagorno-Karabakh, in an escalation that led to three deaths and led to fears of renewed conflict. With the mediation of the European Union, the two countries are negotiating a peace treaty.

The United States: We are monitoring the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.