MOSCOW. April 19 (Interfax-AVN) - Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisian believes that it is premature to consider a peacekeeping operation in Nagorno Karabakh and considers Azerbaijan's decision to increase the military budget as blackmail.
"Unfortunately there is no agreement between us and Azerbaijan so far. That is why it is too early to speak about peacekeepers," Sarkisian said in an interview with Russia's Krasnaya Zvezda daily, published on Wednesday.
A peacekeeping operation requires the consent of all parties to the conflict, he said. "This matter can only be discuss when the parties come to an agreement," he noted.
Speaking about the increase of Azerbaijan's military budget and Baku's promises to bring it up to $1 dillion, the minister said that this "looks like blackmail."
"Billions of dollars will not help in this case. If large military budgets had determined combat capabilities and combat readiness of troops, all oil-exporting countries would have had the most combat-ready armies long ago. But this is not the case," Sarkisian said.
According to him, "any unresolved conflict in the Caucasus may work as a detonator."
"The South Caucasus is a very small region, and all countries depend on each other here. Thus, resumption of hostilities may have extremely negative consequences," he said.