Azerbaijani President Aliyev has repeatedly described such a change as a precondition for signing a peace deal with Armenia. Aliyev and other Azerbaijani officials have pointed to the constitution’s preamble that mentions a 1990 declaration of Armenia’s independence. The declaration in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
Elnur Mammadov, an Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister, on Tuesday described this as one of the “two main obstacles to achieving a lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
“The second obstacle is that Armenia’s representatives have different positions,” Mammadov said during a government-organized event in Baku on the remaining hurdles to the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. He did not elaborate.
Pashinian took to X to respond to Mammadov hours later. He again downplayed the legal significance of the preamble, citing a recent ruling by the Armenian Constitutional Court that articles of the constitution take precedence over the reference to the 1990 declaration.
“No provision of the Armenian Constitution contains any territorial claim against our neighbors,” he wrote.
Pashinian himself declared in January that Armenia needs a new constitution reflecting the “new geopolitical environment” in the region. He denied critics’ claims that he wants to scrap the current constitution at the behest of Baku. Still, Pashinian said at the time that peace with Azerbaijan will be impossible as long as the constitutional preamble remains in place.
In May, the Armenian premier ordered an ad hoc government panel to draft the new constitution by the end of 2026. The panel has still not started working on it.
Speaking in the Armenian parliament on December 4, Pashinian expressed hope that the treaty will be signed soon despite Baku’s preconditions. Aliyev repeated them the following day. He said Armenia should not only change its constitution but also ensure the return of Azerbaijanis who lived there until the late 1980s.
