Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reiterated those demands in late April, calling them a “precondition” for the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. He said Armenia must specifically remove from its constitution a reference to a 1990 declaration of independence which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
Mirzoyan said in this regard that both Yerevan and Baku see in each other’s constitution “obstacles to the establishment of a lasting peace.”
“This does not mean at all that, for example, the issue of constitutional changes in Armenia is a subject of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan or part of their agenda,” he told lawmakers in Yerevan. “There is no such thing.”
Aliyev first voiced his demands about two weeks after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian declared on January 19 Armenia needs a new constitution reflecting the “new geopolitical environment” in the region.
Pashinian denied afterwards that he wants to scrap the current Armenian constitution at the behest of Baku. Still, he said that peace with Azerbaijan will be impossible as long as the constitutional reference to the 1990 declaration remains in place.
Aliyev renewed the demands after forcing Pashinian’s administration to agree to hand over four disputed border areas to Azerbaijan. Armenian opposition leaders and other critics of Pashinian have strongly condemned him for bowing to the Azerbaijani pressure, saying that will only encourage Baku to demand more Armenian concessions.
Mirzoyan has repeatedly complained in recent months that the Azerbaijani side remains reluctant to explicitly recognize Armenia’s borders through the peace treaty.