Talking to media on Tuesday, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Paruyr Hovannisian said that the threats as well as insults were made during a diplomatic reception and that the Armenian side notified both the Belgian authorities and the European Union about the incident.
“An investigation on that matter is ongoing,” Hovannisian told reporters.
The incident was first reported by the American publication Politico, which cited Balayan as saying that Sadikov had threatened him during the event. The Armenian Embassy in Brussels subsequently filed an official complaint with other diplomatic missions in the Belgian capital.
The incident reportedly took place at a reception hosted by the Turkish Embassy at the Tangla Hotel in Brussels, marking Turkey’s national holiday. Sadikov has reportedly denied the allegations, dismissing them as “ridiculous.”
The tensions come amid ongoing negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan over a potential peace agreement to end decades of enmity resulting from territorial disputes.
The two nations have fought two major wars since the early 1990s, with the most recent conflict in 2020 resulting in a victory for Azerbaijan. That war led to the defeat of Armenia-backed ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan seizing control over parts of the region. In September 2023, Azerbaijan completed its military takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, displacing more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, nearly the entire population of the enclave, who fled to Armenia.