The treaty was initialed during an Armenian-Azerbaijani summit hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in August. In a separate document, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian also pledged to open a U.S.-administered transit corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia. It will be called be the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
Pashinian has since regularly declared that “peace has been established” between the two South Caucasus countries. However, Baku continues to make the signing of the peace treaty conditional on a change of the Armenian constitution which it says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. Mirzoyan singled out this precondition in an interview with Armenian Public Television.
“This should end with the signing and then ratification [of the accord,]” he said. “They have their ideas. We don’t share those ideas ... We don’t yet have an agreement here. As I said, we have solved many issues and done many things, but there are important issues on which we don’t yet have agreement and we must keep working [on them.]”
Mirzoyan again insisted that the constitution issue is not on the agenda of Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. Still, Pashinian has pledged to enact a new constitution that would conform to Baku’s demands. He plans to put it on a referendum in case of winning Armenia’s parliamentary elections slated for June.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov reiterated late last week that Baku will not sign the peace treaty before the change of the Armenian constitution. He made clear that the signing is also contingent on Yerevan’s implementation of the TRIPP. Echoing Pashinian’s recent statement, Mirzoyan said the process will get underway next summer.
Crucial details of the transit arrangement have yet to be worked out, a fact emphasized by Hakob Badalian, an Armenian political analyst. Badalian suggested on Monday that Baku is therefore trying to clinch more concessions from Yerevan that would further compromise Armenian control over the corridor.
“Azerbaijan will strive to have a concrete involvement there,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.