According to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Bayramov “underlined the next steps to be taken towards signing the peace treaty and the need to eliminate territorial claims against Azerbaijan in the Armenian constitution” during talks with his visiting Finnish counterpart Elina Valtonen.
The treaty was initialed during Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s August 8 meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. 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 through a referendum. He reaffirmed those plans after the Washington summit. He said late last month that the referendum will not be held before or simultaneously with Armenia’s next general elections due in June 2026. This means that the constitution sought by Baku could be adopted only if Pashinian’s Civil Contract party wins the vote.
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. Armenian opposition groups have pledged to mobilize voters to reject it.