Armenia is not ready for Russia-mediated peace talks with Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Wednesday, according to the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

He also noted that his country is not considering deploying peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian news agencies reported.

The international community is calling for talks to end the decades-old conflict between the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus Mountains region following a flare-up of violence this week.

The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) called on Armenia and Azerbaijan Tuesday evening to immediately halt the fighting and urgently resume talks without preconditions. The United Nations' most powerful body strongly condemned the use of force and backed Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ earlier call to stop the fighting, de-escalate tensions and resume talks "without delay."

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told Russian state TV channel Russia 1 that Baku is committed to negotiating a resolution but that Armenia is obstructing the process.

"The Armenian prime minister publicly declares that Karabakh is (part of) Armenia, period. In this case, what kind of negotiating process can we talk about?" Aliyev said. He added that according to principles brokered by the Minsk Group, which was set up in 1992 by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to resolve the conflict, "territories around the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region should be transferred to Azerbaijan."

Aliyev noted that if Pashinyan says "that Karabakh is Armenia and that we should negotiate with the so-called puppet regime of Nagorno-Karabakh, (he is) trying to break the format of negotiations that has existed for 20 years."

Pashinyan, in turn, told the broadcaster that "it is very hard to talk about negotiations ... when specific military operations are underway." He said there is no military solution to the conflict and called for a compromise.

Border clashes broke out early Sunday when Armenian forces targeted Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions, leading to casualties in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Since then, tensions have continued to escalate with Turkey firmly standing with Azerbaijan.

The European Union, Russia and NATO, among others, have urged an immediate halt to clashes along the frontier.

The Nagorno-Karabakh region, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, has been controlled by Armenian separatists since the conflict broke out following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Though a cease-fire was agreed on in 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia still regularly accuse each other of attacks around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Azerbaijani-Armenian border.

There are four UNSC resolutions and two U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions, as well as innumerable calls by international organizations, that demand the withdrawal of the occupational Armenian forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other occupied regions of Azerbaijan.