TEHRAN, April 4. /TASS/. Iran’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Zakir Hasanov have discussed in a telephone conversation the latest development in Nagorno-Karabakh, IRNA news agency reported on Monday.

Dehghan noted the importance of settling the conflict by peaceful means and called on Baku and Yerevan to exercise restraint. He added that Iran will make every effort to help alleviate tensions.

This is the second conversation between the defense ministers over the last 24 hours. On Sunday Dehghan held telephone talks with the defense ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. He tried to convince them to end the conflict and settle the crisis by dialogue," IRNA noted.

On Saturday, April 2, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh rapidly deteriorated when the parties to the Karabakh conflict accused each other of violating truce along the front line. The claims came from defense authorities of Armenia and of Azerbaijan.

Neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan fell out with each other in the late 1980s because of Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up but was mainly populated by Armenians.