Status of Caspian Sea: Russia takes up the torch

The Caspian countries' summit has ended without any final decision on the legal status of the Caspian Sea The presidents agreed to finish the basic convention next year in Russia - Dmitry Medvedev will host the 4th summit in 2011.  Nevertheless, the Baku summit was not unsuccessful. Privately, the heads of the countries managed to find principal decisions to move the process of defining the legal status of the Caspian Sea forward.

The previous summit took place three years ago in Tehran. Experts of the countries kept on meeting to find possible variants of a joint convention, but they did not manage to achieve anything. An alternative to a legal convention was a significant Agreement on cooperation in the sphere of security of the Caspian Sea.  It defined that the Caspian countries will resolve regional questions only within the boundaries of these countries, without any mediators or advisers. Dmitry Medvedev stated that the Caspian countries should pay the same attention to the problems of the Caspian Sea, otherwise other countries might start working on them. "We all agree that we are responsible for the situation in the Caspian region - only us and nobody else." The president said. The Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, underlined the positive attitude to finding a compromise on the essence and text of the convention.  He thinks the fact that the legal status of the Caspian Sea is not defined does not affect the relations between the countries of the region. He also proposed to use as a basis for future negotiations already existing agreements between Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

A big step forwards was taken on the problem of delimitation of the borders at the region. The services of the countries will discuss the width of the border area. The Russian president thinks this would improve the chances of signing the convention next year.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also wants to work faster. The deadline is 2011,
he said. From this year the meetings of the Caspian countries will be annual events. As for the experts, they will meet even more often - at least 5 times a year.

Nevertheless, there are issues the countries have opposite opinions about. For instance, Aliyev said that the Caspian countries should not be rivals in the energy sphere, and the Azerbaijani infrastructure could be used for gas transit. The president of Turkmenistan thinks that pipelines can be built in the area of the Caspian Sea only if the country possessing this area agrees. A little earlier Iran and Russia said they were against any construction as it could harm the ecology of the sea. Kazakhstan says that pipelines can be built but only after all countries agree. So no consensus on this question has been achieved. The heads of the countries decided to place a moratorium on catching sturgeon fish for five years. This initiative was proposed by Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.  He thinks it could help preserve and restore the resources of the sea.

Yevgeny Krishtalev. Exclusively for VK.