Cardin commented on the draft treaty discussed by Baku and Yerevan during a hearing in Washington on Tuesday organized by the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a mostly congressional federal agency that monitors human rights.
“If I understand it, they’re not even talking about taking care of Nagorno-Karabakh from the point of view of access by the community that’s been displaced,” he said. “They’re not even talking about the border issues as far as the areas that are currently under control by Azerbaijan in Armenia. So it’s not really a very fair agreement.”
“With all that being said, my understanding is that Armenia wants to move forward with the agreement because that’s the only way they are going to be able to get their borders opened and get their country economically on the right path,” he said.
Cardin, who co-chairs the Helsinki Commission with a Republican congressman, went on to suggest that the agreement is unlikely to be signed anytime soon because Baku is demanding a change of Armenia’s constitution which it claims contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
“Azerbaijan is insisting on constitutional changes in Armenia, which is ridiculous,” said the Maryland Democrat. “This is a ridiculous requirement that they are asking for. It’s not needed, and it’s really something we believe is to delay or eliminate the agreement.”
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reaffirmed that precondition on Tuesday when it rejected Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s fresh offer to sign an interim peace deal that would leave out the few remaining sticking points. It said Yerevan’s insistence on “excluding the non-agreed points from the draft treaty” is “unacceptable” to Baku.
Nevertheless, Pashinian on Wednesday continued to repeat his proposal. The signed document would contain 16 of the 17 articles of the draft treaty on which the two sides fully or mostly agree, he told the Armenian parliament. He did not elaborate on those provisions.
“Whatever the agreement is, it still won't answer all the important questions,” Pashinian said, responding to Baku’s objections.
Armenian opposition leaders claim Pashinian is desperate to sign such a document in hopes of misleading Armenians and increasing his chances of holding on to power. Like Cardin, they have complained that it says nothing about Karabakh and does not require Azerbaijan to withdraw from Armenian border areas occupied in 2021-2022.