BUDAPEST — Long-standing tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia have escalated after an Azeri army officer who murdered an Armenian officer was given a hero's welcome on returning home after eight years in prison in Hungary last month.

"There is already a war of words, and I am very much concerned that a further stepping up of negative rhetoric will lead to violent clashes or even a new war," said Ulrike Lunacek, an Austrian member of the European Parliament's EU-Armenia, EU-Azerbaijan and EU-Georgia committee, which is calling for the murderer to be imprisoned and his hero status revoked.

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