Baku irritated by Pashinyan's upcoming meeting with Blinken and Von der Leyne

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will meet with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyne on 5 April.

Asked about the goals of the upcoming meeting, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said: "Our goals with respect to the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan are to encourage the parties to overcome their existing differences and work toward a strong and sustainable peace agreement."

Earlier, Armenian Security Council Secretary Armen Grigoryan said that the meeting would be held in Brussels and ways of trilateral co-operation to develop Armenia and strengthen its sustainability would be discussed there.

Official Baku expressed dissatisfaction with the upcoming meeting, believing that the EU and the US are planning to provide military assistance to Armenia. In particular, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizade expressed dissatisfaction with the deployment of the EU Monitoring Mission on the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. "This mission is actively used as an instrument of anti-Azerbaijani propaganda. Moreover, with Canada joining the EU Monitoring Mission, it is de facto a NATO mission. These steps are also accompanied by statements in which the mission is referred to as a 'deterrent force' and without any grounds create an illusion of possible Azerbaijani intervention," the spokesman noted.

It also expressed "concern" about France's plans to supply Armenia with military equipment, including lethal and assault weapons. Plans to provide the military aid to Armenia in the framework of the European Peace Facility and information and the 5 April meeting "include military components which are detrimental to peacebuilding efforts in the region".  This sort of activity on the part of the European Union and the U.S. is clearly one-sided and biased, Hajizadeh said.

He concluded by calling the upcoming meeting in Brussels "an illusion that the EU and the US will support Armenia in its repeated possible provocations against Azerbaijan. In this case, the EU and the US will share responsibility for any destabilising actions of Armenia".