By John Irish and Charlotte Van Campenhout
PARIS (Reuters) -France has agreed on future contracts with Armenia to supply it with military equipment to help ensure its defences, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday during a visit to Yerevan.
It was the first trip to Armenia by a Western government minister since Azerbaijani forces captured Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist ethnic Armenian region within Azerbaijan, in a lightning military operation on Sept. 20.
Colonna travelled to Armenia to assess its immediate needs amid an influx of refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh and fears of Azerbaijani military action against Armenia following Karabakh's fall, diplomats said.
During a live-streamed joint press conference with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Colonna said she had also asked European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to include Armenia in the scope of the European Peace Facility (EPF), an EU military aid fund.
"France will be vigilant regarding the territorial integrity of Armenia," Colonna said. "I hope that (EU) member states will send a clear signal to all those who would be tempted to call into question the sovereignty of Armenia."
She declined to elaborate on what sort of military aid was envisaged for Armenia under future supply contracts.
France and its Western allies fear that Armenia and its government could be destabilised after its historical military ally, Russia, appeared to abandon it over the last few weeks.
The Nagorno-Karabakh issue is a delicate subject in Paris. A week after Baku took control of the enclave, prompting more than 100,000 people to flee to Armenia, French lawmakers from across the political spectrum criticised President Emmanuel Macron's government for not doing enough to help Karabakh's Armenians.
France's population includes between 400,000 to 600,000 people of Armenian origin, a powerful lobby group during election periods.
Paris has already provided 12.5 million euros ($13.08 million) in humanitarian aid to Armenia and French officials have backed the idea of imposing EU sanctions on Baku.
But they concede that there is a reluctance within the EU to do so just a year after the bloc agreed a major energy deal to replace Russian supplies following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Karabakh is viewed internationally as part of Azerbaijan but had been run as a breakaway ethnic Armenian statelet since the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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