The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan plan to meet this week in a bid to defuse escalating tensions between the two countries after at least 18 soldiers were killed in the worst clashes in two decades. The fighting in the past week in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been the deadliest since the two former Soviet states signed a cease-fire in 1994. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan will hold talks with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the Russian city of Sochi on Aug. 8-9, Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said on the government’s website. “We hope that serious arrangements will be reached during the meeting,” Abrahamyan said. “We are not afraid of war, I just think it is not clever to solve problems with wars in the 21st century.” The skirmishes between the South Caucasus countries, which border Turkey and Iran , flared amid the worst geopolitical standoff […]