18 November 2024
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that Armenia’s Declaration of Independence, referenced in its constitution, implies that the ‘Republic of Armenia cannot exist’.
On Thursday, Pashinyan said that he had reached a ‘horrifying conclusion’ that Armenia’s Declaration of Independence implied that the ‘Republic of Armenia cannot exist’.
The Declaration is referenced in the Constitution’s preamble. Azerbaijani officials, including President Ilham Aliyev, have repeatedly stated that Armenia’s constitution contained territorial claims against Azerbaijan, in an apparent reference to the Declaration.
Armenia’s Declaration of Independence, signed in August 1990, includes a joint decision by the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Karabakh Council to ‘reunify the Armenian SSR and the Mountainous Region of Karabakh’.
His remarks on the Declaration of Independence followed a series of posts he made on X on Wednesday, in which he also accused Azerbaijan’s constitution of containing territorial claims ‘amounting [to] approximately 60%’ of Armenia.
However, Pashinyan said that Armenia does not demand that Azerbaijan change its constitution because it would lead to a ‘deadlock’ in the peace process, and so that ‘none of the parties may invoke internal legislation as justification for its failure to implement this agreement’.
On the same day, Pashinyan also did not rule out that Armenia might initiate an amendment of the constitution, ‘if the Constitutional Court decides that the text of the peace agreement does not correspond to the constitution’.
In January, Pashinyan warned that if the state policy should be based on the decision of the National Council of Nagorno Karabakh and the Supreme Council of Armenia on the reunification of Karabakh and Armenia, ‘we will never have peace. Moreover, this means that we will now have a war’.
On Friday, the chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Relations, Sargis Khandanyan, expressed his support for Pashinyan’s statement.
‘That document was adopted in 1990, when there was no independent Armenia, but the vision described in the Declaration of Independence depicts the independent Republic of Armenia very unrealistically, therefore I share that approach,’ he said.
Regional communications and peace talks
On Friday, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, commented on the unblocking of regional transit routes as part of the peace process. He noted that it was not a new development and that Armenia was supposed to unblock routes connecting Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan as part of the 9 November statement that brought an end to the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020.
‘After more than three years of discussions, we believe the term “agreement reached” is somewhat late,’ said Bayramov in response to statements made by Pashinyan about reaching a resolution to unblock routes.
‘This agreement should have been reached a long time ago. If there is no official document on this yet, if Armenia has not started any work in this direction, then there are still open issues. In Azerbaijan, work has been progressing rapidly for a long time regarding the establishment of transport infrastructure within its territory, and this infrastructure will soon reach the border with Armenia’.
Bayramov also stated that currently, Azerbaijan’s main focus was the UN COP29 summit, hence ‘it is impossible to have physical meetings before December’.
‘December or January is another matter. There is no concrete agreement on this yet. Apart from the physical meetings, the work on the document continues and this work has not stopped yet.’
On Sunday, Aliyev stated during his meeting with August Pfluger, a member of the US House of Representatives, that Armenia’s policy of militarisation and arms race were ‘a threat to regional peace and security’.
He said it was important that the territorial claims against Azerbaijan in the Armenian Constitution be abandoned for the peace treaty to be signed.
