Pashinyan: Armenia needs new constitution

YEREVAN. July 5 (Interfax) - Armenia needs a new constitution, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.

"Today, an Armenian citizen does not think that the constitution reflects his or her understanding and agreement on the rules of life with a neighbor, the community and fellow citizens. The citizen believes that the ruling elite wrote this text, declared its adoption and actually implemented it in Armenia," Pashinyan said in an address on the Constitution Day.

This is "an essential problem for our country, which needs a new constitution," he said.

"I am talking about not much a new text as a new method for its drafting and adoption. We need a new constitution people will deem their own, written and adopted by them, and believe that everything written there is their idea of the state they built and relations between people and citizens in this state," Pashinyan said.

"The issue is being actively discussed inside and outside the country," he said.

"However, we must steadily continue to strengthen our state - the Republic of Armenia - and make it institutionally, psychologically and physically invulnerable. This is a difficult but honorable path, we are on the right path, but in order to do it, we need to focus on one specific task: serving the state interests of the Republic of Armenia," Pashinyan said.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said earlier that amendments to the Armenian constitution are a chief condition of the peace agreement, as the constitution lays territorial claims to Azerbaijan and there will be no peace agreement until the claims are dropped.