Simonian, who is a key political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, claimed that Azerbaijani leaders’ continuing statements making the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty conditional on such a change are “not a precondition.”
“You call it a precondition, but I can say that it’s a concern,” he told reporters. “They want that to get things right on paper because everything can happen in life and they want to make sure that there is no reason for a new war in the future. This is a good desire.”
“It’s just that we believe raising such an issue is not appropriate as the issue has been solved,” added Simonian.
The speaker had already raised eyebrows in Armenia with other statements denounced by opposition leaders as pro-Azerbaijani and treasonous. In particular, he stated on September 11 that Azerbaijan is pushing for the opening of a land corridor to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s Syunik province because it has “very big wounds” and feels that “Armenia kept 20 percent of their country under occupation for 30 years.”
“It is obvious that it is very important for Azerbaijan to prevent any possible future [Armenia] threat,” he said.
In May, Simonian offered a similar explanation for Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s continuing description of much of Armenia’s territory as “Western Azerbaijan.” He blamed such statements, denounced by the Armenian Foreign Ministry as territorial claims, on activities of Nagorno-Karabakh’s exiled leadership in Armenia. He dismissed an argument that “Western Azerbaijan” never existed as an entity whereas Karabakh was for decades at the center of peace talks mediated by the United States, Russia and France.
Pashinian’s detractors say Simonian’s statements expose the true nature of his appeasement policy towards Azerbaijan and plans to make more concessions to Baku that would jeopardize Armenia’s very existence as a viable state. They have brushed aside Pashinian’s claims that “peace has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan” as a result of his U.S.-brokered agreements with Aliyev reached in Washington on August 8.
Aliyev expressed confidence later in August that Armenia will change its constitution to meet his main precondition for peace. While rejecting the precondition in public, Pashinian pledged last year to enact a new constitution.
Baku specifically wants Yerevan to remove a constitutional preamble that mentions Armenia’s 1990 declaration of independence, which in turn cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. The only legal way to do that is to adopt a new constitution through a referendum.