By Gayane Saribekian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan again pledged on Friday, March 13, to try to enact the kind of constitutional change that Azerbaijan has set as a necessary condition for ending the conflict with Armenia.
He said that a new Armenian constitution planned by him must carry no reference to a 1990 declaration of independence which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
The declaration is referenced in a preamble to Armenia’s current constitution. Azerbaijan says that this amounts to a claim to Karabakh recaptured by Baku in 2023. It has made clear that it will not sign an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty, initiated last August, unless Yerevan removes the reference. The only legal way to do that is to adopt a new constitution through a referendum.
While insisting that the current constitution contains no territorial claims, Pashinyan has pledged to try to change it. He again criticized the 1990 declaration on March 13, claiming that it could provoke another war with Azerbaijan.
“The [ruling] Civil Contract is the only political force that says there must be no reference to the Declaration of Independence in the new constitution,” he said in a video message posted on Facebook.
