By Shoghik Galstian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — A senior Armenian lawmaker complained on Tuesday, February 25, that Azerbaijan is making it harder for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s administration to enact a new Armenian constitution by continuing to publicly demand such a change.
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov reiterated on Monday that an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal is conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution which Baku says lays claim to Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We are waiting for Armenia to overcome the main obstacle in the settlement process by legally abandoning territorial claims to Azerbaijan through constitutional changes,” he told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Arman Yeghoyan, the chairman of the Armenian parliament committee on European integration affiliated with Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, criticized Mammadov’s remarks.
“I regard that statement as an obstacle to the constitutional reforms in Armenia,” said Yeghoyan. “With such statements, Azerbaijan’s representatives, being well aware of the reaction they will generate in Armenia, want to scuttle the constitutional reforms in Armenia.”
Baku specifically wants Yerevan to remove a constitutional preamble that mentions Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence, which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. The only legal way to do that is to adopt a new constitution.
