FACTBOX: Key facts about Armenia

(Reuters) - Armenian President Robert Kocharyan declared a state of emergency in the capital on Saturday as he sought to end protests over a presidential election which the opposition says was rigged.

A statement from the presidential press service said Kocharyan had signed a decree declaring the state of emergency until March 20 "to prevent a threat to constitutional order".

Here are some key facts about the ex-Soviet republic in the Caucasus mountains.

POPULATION - 3.22 million as of January 2007, according to the National Statistics Service.

ETHNIC COMPOSITION - More than 97 percent of the population is Armenian. There are small minorities of Russians, Kurds and Greeks.

GEOGRAPHY - Landlocked, bordering Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Turkey, and with a total area of 29,800 square km.

CAPITAL - Yerevan.

LANGUAGE - Armenian is the official language. Russian and Kurdish are also spoken. Armenian belongs to a branch of the Indo-European family of languages with a unique 39-character script.

RELIGION - Most Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church, an ancient independent branch of Christianity. Armenia was the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion, in 301.

ECONOMY - Armenia's Gross Domestic Product grew 13.7 percent in 2007, and annual inflation was 6.6 percent. Armenia joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in January 2003. Its national currency is the dram.

KEY INDUSTRIES - Agriculture, textiles, food processing, construction materials, diamond cutting, mining and chemicals are all major industries. Gold and molybdenum, a metal used to toughen steel, are mined, mainly for export.

HISTORY - Armenia says 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were killed in what it says was a genocide by Ottoman Turks in 1915-1923. Turkey denies the killings were a genocide. It says the Armenians were victims of a partisan war that also claimed many Muslim Turkish lives.

An independent Armenian state existed from 1918 to 1921 but was swallowed up by Communist Russia in 1921, later becoming a republic of the Soviet Union until independence in 1991.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Armenia was involved in a conflict with a neighboring Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. About 35,000 people died in the conflict. Hundreds of thousands fled. Most have been unable to return to the territory, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by Armenian forces since the fighting.

(Reporting by Hasmik Mkrtchyan; Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Jon Boyle)