By Shoghik Galstian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to disagree on some major issues, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on December 29, pointing to Baku’s key precondition for signing an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
The treaty was initiated during an Armenian-Azerbaijani summit hosted by US President Donald Trump at the White House in August. In a separate document, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also pledged to open a US-administered transit corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia. It will be called the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
Pashinyan has since regularly declared that “peace has been established” between the two South Caucasus countries. However, Baku continues to make the signing of the peace treaty conditional on a change of the Armenian constitution which it says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. Mirzoyan singled out this precondition in an interview with Armenian Public Television.
“This should end with the signing and then ratification [of the agreement,]” he said. “They have their ideas. We don’t share those ideas … We don’t yet have an agreement here. As I said, we have solved many issues and done many things, but there are important issues on which we don’t yet have an agreement and we must keep working [on them.]”
Mirzoyan again insisted that the constitution issue is not on the agenda of Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. Still, Pashinyan has pledged to enact a new constitution that would conform to Baku’s demands. He plans to put it on a referendum in case of winning Armenia’s parliamentary elections slated for June.
