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Azerbaijani president accuses West of seeking to draw vision lines in South Caucasus

"That is why we expressed our concern over the unprecedented meeting in Brussels between the European Commission president, the US secretary of state, and the Armenian prime minister," Ilham Aliyev stressed

BAKU, April 23. /TASS/. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has slammed the recent meeting in the US-EU-Armenia format as an attempt to draw division lines in the South Caucasus.

"Certain attempts are being made to draw division lines in the South Caucasus. That is why we expressed our concern over the unprecedented meeting in Brussels between the European Commission president, the US secretary of state, and the Armenian prime minister," he told a conference at ADA University.

He stressed that this was the first such meeting with the leader of a former Soviet republic. "No such meeting has even been organized even with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova," he stressed.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell inn Brussels on April 5. The European Commission president promised to allocated some 270 million euro in grants to Armenia in the next four years. Following this meeting, the Russian foreign ministry called on Yerevan not to let the West deceive itself and lead it along a wrong path. The ministry slammed the meeting as "another try by the collective West to drag the South Caucasus into a geopolitical confrontation." According to the ministry, Washington and Brussels "are using delusive promises to lure Armenia into quitting the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet security bloc - TASS) and the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union - TASS) and demanding the withdrawal of the Russian military base and border guards."

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