By BBC Monitoring
Armenian and Azerbaijani officials have made conflicting statements on a direct communication line between the leaderships of the two countries.
The idea of a direct line comes from a short conversation between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders, Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev respectively, on the side-lines of the CIS summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on 28 September. The two men reached a verbal agreement on taking measures to reduce tensions and prevent ceasefire violations along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the contact line in Azerbaijan's breakaway Karabakh and agreed to set up a direct communication line.
Since then, Armenian officials, including Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, have said that tensions have eased and the situation has improved in Karabakh and on the border.
Sputnik Armenia website quoted on 6 November Armenian Defence Minister Davit Tonoyan as saying that a direct phone link with the Azerbaijani side, which was set up to coordinate military issues along the border, was already functioning. He added that the communication line was not between the two countries' defence ministers. He said a relevant official was responsible for communicating and reporting the minister's messages.
"When we fix movements of troops, engineering works, or some other actions, we communicate to the Azerbaijani side to stop it," Sputnik quoted Tonoyan as saying and adding that the Azerbaijani side's reaction was "very constructive".
Tonoyan said there was no direct phone link between Acting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, but he said "the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry also communicates not with me personally, but with the ministry, also constructively".
Tonoyan also noted that the tension on the frontline reduced after the Pashinyan-Aliyev meeting in Dushanbe.
However, the Azerbaijani Minval.az quoted a statement made by the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry on the same day that denied Tonoyan's statement.
"There is no connection or any other kind of contacts between the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry and the Armenian Defence Ministry," the statement said.
"Under the Dushanbe agreement, a responsible person has been identified to maintain connections with Armenia over the situation on the front line, but the person is not an officer of the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry," the statement by the Defence Ministry said.