Nagorno-Karabakh: Protesters in Armenia condemn 'treacherous' peace

Thousands of people have joined a rally in the centre of Armenia's capital, Yerevan, after the prime minister agreed a peace deal to end six weeks of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Seventeen opposition parties took part in the protest and dozens of people were arrested amid demands for the Armenian leader to resign.

Under the Russian-brokered deal, Azerbaijan keeps areas it has captured.

Hundreds of Russian peacekeepers have already been deployed on the ground.

Turkey's president said on Wednesday that it had signed a deal with Russia to take part in "joint peace forces" to monitor the agreement.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but it has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since a 1994 truce. Azerbaijan has not only recaptured areas around the enclave but it has taken the key town of Shusha inside it too.

Many of the protesters in Yerevan's Freedom Square chanted "Nikol is a traitor", denouncing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's acceptance of the peace deal with Azerbaijan.

According to Armenian reports, 79 people were detained and protesters began heading towards government headquarters. Some of the protesters said the prime minister should have consulted the people before agreeing a peace deal, accusing him of breaching the constitution, a BBC correspondent in Yerevan reports.

Mr Pashinyan himself took office after leading a peaceful 2018 revolution in the post-Soviet state.

Under the terms of the agreement to end the conflict over Karabakh, Armenia has agreed to withdraw from parts of the enclave as well as adjacent areas that it seized from Azerbaijan in the 1990s.

Speaking via Facebook, Mr Pashinyan insisted that if he had not agreed to halt the conflict, there would have been even greater losses - a comment backed up earlier by Karabakh's ethnic Armenian leader Arayik Harutyunyan.

The prime minister said he had taken the "painful" decision following a "deep analysis of the military situation" to agree the deal, handing over three areas adjacent to Karabakh - Aghdam, Lachin and Kalbajar.

But after Shusha (Shushi in Armenian) inside Karabakh fell to Azerbaijan at the weekend, he said there was a risk of "total collapse" with thousands of Armenian soldiers being placed under siege and the enclave's main city falling too. "We had a situation where Stepanakert was left defenceless."

Mr Pashinyan signed the deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for almost 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to patrol the front line as well as the "Lachin corridor", which links Stepanakert to Armenia.

In a statement Gen Sergei Rudskoy of the Russian General Staff said that 16 observation posts would be set up on the "line of contact" to prevent "illegal action" against civilians and escort convoys and cargo. More than 400 peacekeepers had already arrived and were in control of the Lachin corridor, he added.

Russia has a military alliance with Armenia as well as an army base, but it did not intervene during the conflict. It has close ties with Azerbaijan and has sold weapons to both countries.

Turkey openly backed Azerbaijan during the conflict and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a Turkish-Russian control centre would be set up in the "liberated part of the Azerbaijan" to monitor the ceasefire.