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Pashinyan has faced calls to resign since last November when he
agreed to a Russian-brokered ceasefire that halted six weeks of
fighting in which ethnic Armenians lost territory to Azeri
forces in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
"Based on discussions I have had with Armenia's president, the
'My Step' faction and with the leader of the Bright Armenia
faction... special parliamentary elections will be held on June
20..." Pashinyan wrote on Facebook.
The army told Pashinyan to quit on Feb. 25, prompting the prime
minister to sack the chief of the army's general staff.
Armenia's president, whose role is largely ceremonial, declined
to approve the army chief's dismissal, and the general's lawyer
said on Thursday he remained in his post.
Pashinyan, who was swept to power by protests in 2018, has been
under fire since the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, seen as a fiasco
for ethnic Armenian forces.
The enclave is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan
but is populated by ethnic Armenians, who had held full control
there and across a swathe of surrounding territory since a war
in the 1990s.
Pashinyan said he had been compelled to agree to the peace deal
to prevent greater human and territorial losses.
(Reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy; Writing by Tom Balmforth;
Editing by Alison Williams, Gareth Jones and Peter Graff)
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