Yerevan /Mediamax/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that “peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan not only is possible, but is within reach.”

“Now, to seize this historic opportunity and to avoid the risk of reaching a deadlock, Armenia proposes to take what has already been agreed in the draft agreement, sign it, have a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan and then go on with negotiations on pending issues. We are ready to do this right now.

When we examine the agreed text of the peace agreement in terms of compliance with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, we see the following picture: under the Constitution of Armenia, agreements that contradict the Constitution may not be ratified. And as in other cases, after signing the peace agreement with Azerbaijan, we must submit it to the Constitutional Court to verify the compliance of the agreement with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.

If our Constitutional Court decides that the peace agreement with Azerbaijan is in contradiction with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia (even though our experts assure that it is not likely to happen), then we will face a specific situation where constitutional changes will be needed for the sake of achieving peace.

And if our Constitutional Court decides that the agreement complies with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, then there will be no barriers for ratification in the Parliament of Armenia, and here an extremely important circumstance comes in. Under Paragraph 3 of Article 5 of the Constitution of Armenia, ratified international agreements have precedence over the domestic legislation of the Republic of Armenia, and therefore, after the signing and ratification of the peace agreement with Azerbaijan, theoretically, even if there were laws that could be interpreted as containing territorial claims, these documents would be subordinate to the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace agreement and would automatically have no legal force. The same logic would apply to Azerbaijan of course,” Nikol Pashinyan said at the 79th session of the UN General Assembly at the UN headquarters.