Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has proposed new elections less than a week after declaring opposition lawmakers' calls for new polls "an attempted coup."

Armenia is battling through political turmoil following the 2020 war with Azerbaijan over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. 

The Prosperous Armenia opposition party called for his resignation over his handling of the conflict. 

"If the parliamentary opposition agrees to early elections, we will agree to early elections," Pashinyan told supporters in the capital Yerevan. 

In a direct reference to the calls for his resignation, he pitched the new vote as a referendum on his job. 

"Let's go to the polls and see whose resignation the people are demanding," he said.

READ MORE

Record-breaking ice swim

Brazil-discovered variant found in UK

Europe struggles with long COVID-19

There have been several large political demonstrations in Yerevan over the past week. On Monday, it was government supporters in the central square but there are also anti-Pashinyan groups camped outside parliament. They said they would not leave the makeshift camps unless the government falls.

The dispute stems from the Nagorno-Karabakh peace settlement, which handed over swathes of territory to Azerbaijan and allowed for the deployment of Russian peacekeepers.

The agreement was seen as a national humiliation for many in Armenia, though Pashinyan has said he had no choice but to agree or suffer even bigger losses.