What should we expect from the Astrakhan summit?

By Vestnik Kavkaza

On September 29th the Fourth Caspian Summit will take place in Astrakhan. Vladimir Putin invited the presidents of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Iran Hassan Rouhani, Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. They will discuss key questions of cooperation between the countries of the Caspian region, implementation of decisions made at the previous summit in Baku in 2010, and priority directions of cooperation between the states of the region in the future. It is expected that multilateral agreements will be signed, and Vladimir Putin will conduct bilateral meetings with his colleagues.

Igor Bratchikov, the special envoy of the Russian President on delimitation and demarcation of the Russian borders with the CIS countries, ambassador at large of the Foreign Ministry, said “the first Caspian summit took place in 2001 in Ashkhabad. It was decided that summits would take place regularly. The second summit took place in Tehran in 2007, and the declaration was signed there. The third summit was held in Baku, it resulted in a resolution of the leaders of the states, which significantly contributed to settlement of several issues, first of all security on the Caspian Sea. A framework agreement on cooperation in the security sphere was signed there. In Baku the leaders decided that the next summit would be held in Russia. The summit had been being prepared for a year.”

Bratchikov says that in Astrakhan the sides plan to discuss “problems of building a modern legal regime of the sea, improvement of security and resistance to common challenges and threats on the sea: preservation of the unique natural area and biological resources of the Caspian Sea, acute problems of cooperation in the economic and humanitarian spheres. I would like to stress that the goal is not only to sum up results of the previous summits, but first of all to define priorities for a period before the next summit. This summit will be aimed at the future.”

“We expect that in Astrakhan we will manage to enhance our contractual basis and improve existing negotiating platforms. We expect that the leaders will agree on key principles of cooperation of the five countries; they will be a fundament of a convention of the legal status of the Caspian Sea. We have been working on the document for 18 years. We hope for signing the convention in the near future. We expect that several important intergovernmental agreements will be signed: on cooperation in the sphere of emergencies, on preservation and rational usage of biological resources of the Caspian Sea, and on cooperation in the sphere of hydrometeorology of the Caspian Sea. Each of these agreements are results of longstanding and hard work. These agreements reflect striving of the Caspian states to act in one course, rely on agreed legal norms under consideration of mutual interests,” Bratchikov notes.

According to him, “the Caspian summits are a result of the many-sided and hard work which is going on at various platforms, including those which operate constantly in the Caspian region.”

Bratchikov made examples of such platforms: “Regular meetings of the Foreign Ministers of the five countries. The previous one took place in Moscow in April. Between top level summits the political dialogue is going on at sessions of the special working group at the level of deputy foreign ministers and presidential envoys. This year four such sessions have been held. The interdepartmental commission for biological resources of the Caspian Sea works. After the Astrakhan summit its status will be raised to intergovernmental level. The commission will gain wider functions, including the ban on fishing sturgeon.”

“Cooperation of the five countries in the sphere of the environment is based on the Tehran framework convention which was signed in 2003. Sessions and conference on the issue are regularly held,” Bratchikov notes. According to him, there is a big progress on the Convention: “In the last 2.5 years, three out of four protocols were signed: the protocol of regional preparedness and response and cooperation in case of oil pollution; the protocol on protection of the Caspian Sea from land source pollution; and the protocol on preservation of biological diversity. We expect that in 2015 the fourth final protocol of the Convention will be signed, and all these protocols will be soon ratified.”

“Finally, when I have mentioned the agreement on hydrometeorology, I would like to remind you that the coordination committee on hydrometeorology of the Caspian Sea is working; it deals with a complex analysis of the sea conditions in favor of supporting the lives of the 13 million people who live on the seaboard and economic cooperation. Moreover, the mass media has already reported that heads of anti-drug services meet regularly. They met last week in Astrakhan. A week before it, the heads of the Caspian ports met. This is also a regular platform. A month ago, the ministers of transport met. It was the third session at the level of ministers of transport. They discussed problems of transport,” Bratchikov says. “All mentioned factors enable us to speak about a mechanism of close cooperation between the five countries.”