Senior Armenian and Azerbaijani officials sparred over the matter during a panel discussion held as part of an international security forum in the Turkish city of Antalya.
Hikmet Hajiyev, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy aide, said Baku is still awaiting Yerevan’s “clear answers” regarding legal provisions which it says contain territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
Aliyev said on February 1 that Armenia should remove from its constitution a reference to its 1990 declaration of independence which in turn mentions a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
Pashinian countered afterwards that during their peace talks and written exchanges last year two sides agreed to make sure that they “cannot refer to their respective laws to refuse to comply with any provisions of the peace treaty.” The treaty would commit them to recognizing each other’s territorial integrity.
Ruben Rubinian, a deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament attending the Antalya forum, repeated Pashinian’s argument when he responded to Hajiyev. Rubinian also said that Armenia’s legislation is its internal affair and has nothing do to with Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
The verbal exchange came the day after the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers ended two days of talks in Berlin. Neither side gave indications of major progress made by them towards the signing of the peace accord.
Both ministers proceeded to Antalya to participate in the annual conference. It was not clear whether they will hold any follow-up discussions there.
Pashinian himself declared in January that Armenia needs a new constitution reflecting the “new geopolitical environment” in the region. His political foes and other critics say that he did so under Azerbaijani pressure.
Pashinian has denied that he wants to scrap the current Armenian constitution at the behest of Baku. Still, he has said that peace with Azerbaijan will be impossible as long as the constitutional reference to the 1990 declaration remains in place.