Pashinian denied any connection between the plans and a peace treaty currently discussed by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“There is an agreed article in the text of the peace treaty, which says that the parties cannot refer to their own laws to avoid fulfilling any obligations under this treaty. So the issue here is not about the peace treaty at all,” he told opposition lawmakers during his government’s question-and-answer session in the parliament.
Some of those lawmakers have been allowed by the Armenian Foreign Ministry to read written proposals on the treaty exchanged by Yerevan and Baku in recent months. One of them, Gegham Manukian, said the clause cited by Pashinian was imposed by the Azerbaijani side and runs counter to Armenia’s current constitution. This is why, he said, Pashinian wants to the change the constitution.
The premier responded by accusing Manukian of misleading the public and saying that he and the other opposition deputies will no longer have access to details of the negotiation process. He went on to again criticize a 1990 Armenian declaration of independence, saying that Armenia cannot make peace with Azerbaijan as long as it is guided by that document.
The declaration cited in a preamble to the current constitution refers to a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and calls for international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on February 1 that Armenia should remove that reference and amend other documents “infringing on Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity” if it wants to cut a peace deal with his country. Armenian opposition leaders portrayed Aliyev’s statement as further proof that Pashinian wants to effectively declare the 1990 declaration null and void under pressure from Azerbaijan as well as Turkey. They say this is the main aim of the constitutional change sought by him.