Republican Party of Armenia

Armenia's Prime Minister, Tigran Sargsyan, has called for the EU to issue a three-point resolution to Azerbaijan in a bid to curb the militarisation of the south Caucasus.

At the end of a two-day visit to Brussels (3-4 June), just two days after his re-appointment as prime minister, Tigran Sargsyan told "European Voice" that the EU should draw up a declaration stipulating that the festering dispute over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh must be resolved peacefully, threatening sanctions if force is used and setting out what those sanctions would be.

Tigran Sargsyan also claimed that Azerbaijan has been seeking to undermine the work of the Minsk Group of countries, set up in 1992 by what is now the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to end the war and resolve the dispute.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Azerbaijan increased military spending by 88% in 2011, the largest increase in the world.

Sargsyan said that Armenia was strong enough to maintain a balance of military power.

Armenia's bid for closer relations with the EU potentially puts it at cross-purposes with Russia, whose president, Vladimir Putin, has indicated that he plans to step up efforts to establish a Eurasian Union, a bloc of former Soviet states that could, in effect, act as a counterpoint to the EU. Sargsyan emphasised, however, that he sees Armenia's relations with Russia and the EU as complementary.