YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Armenia’s leadership may soon hold a constitutional referendum to meet Azerbaijan’s key precondition for signing a peace treaty between the two nations, a senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday, August 4.
Azerbaijan objects to a preamble to the current Armenian constitution referring 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 only legal way to remove that reference is to adopt a new constitution through a referendum.
While rejecting the Azerbaijani precondition in public, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has repeatedly called for the kind of constitutional change that is demanded by Baku. Pashinyan said last month that he has a popular mandate to enact such a change after his Civil Contract party’s victory in the June 7 parliamentary elections rejected as fraudulent by the Armenian opposition.
“We are receiving signals that the process of adopting a new constitution will begin in Armenia in the near future,” Aliyev’s chief foreign policy aide, Hikmet Hajiyev, told the Turkish TV channel Haber Global.
“It is possible that a referendum will be organized in Armenia,” he said. “After the removal of the demands addressed to Azerbaijan in the preamble to the Armenian constitution, we will no longer see any obstacles to the final signing of a peace agreement.”
Hajiyev visited Armenia and met with the secretary of the country’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, one week after the disputed elections. The meeting took place in the northern Tavush province. Pashinyan was also in Tavush on a short holiday that day, a fact that prompted opposition and media speculation that he held secret talks with Hajiyev.
