BILISI, Oct 26 (Reuters) – Armenia hopes to conclude a peace agreement with Azerbaijan in the coming months and establish diplomatic relations with it, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday.

Speaking at a forum in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Pashinyan said that Armenia also hopes to open its border with Turkey, a close ally to Azerbaijan, to citizens of third countries.

His comments came amid efforts to cement peace in the volatile South Caucasus after Azerbaijan last month retook the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally regarded as Azeri territory but which had been ruled by breakaway ethnic Armenians since the 1990s.