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\"Therefore,\" he added, \"I would like to note the technical overhaul of the Russian Armed Forces has been and will remain the focus of our closest attention.\"

NATO states on the European frontier with Russia have the most unease about Russian aggression. Last month, Reuters reported that Erdogan was blocking a NATO defense plan for the Baltics and Poland unless NATO agreed to formally class Syria’s Kurdish fighters as terrorists -- a move that has been rejected by France and the U.S.

But the secretary general dismissed questions on whether the alliance was fracturing, saying \"Disagreements will always attract more attention than when we agree.\"

\"We are 29 different counties, from both sides of the Atlantic, with different history, different geography, and different political parties in power. So of course there are differences. Anything else would be very strange,\" Stoltengerg said on Wednesday.

He added that \"the strength of NATO is that we have always been able to overcome these differences.\"

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