By Vestnik Kavkaza
On March 5, 2015 Baku will host a meeting of the Special Working Group on the issues of the Caspian Sea, where the development of a draft agreement on economic cooperation between the Caspian states will be discussed, the initiative of the president of Turkmenistan to create a Caspian Economic Forum acting on an ongoing basis will be discussed, as well as the draft Agreement on Cooperation in the field of transport on the Caspian Sea.
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov gave certain orders on promotion of Turkmenistan's proposals, including proposals on cooperation between the Caspian states in the trade-economic and transport spheres.
The director of the Caspian Cooperation Institute, Sergei Mikheyev, has the most optimistic expectations from the Baku meeting, as it is one of the stages of preparing solutions for the next summit, which will be held in Astana. In Astrakhan it was announced that the next summit in Kazakhstan will take place in two years: “Two years is a short period for making the decisions which could be signed at this summit. In Astrakhan we were talking about the final settlement of the legal status of the Caspian Sea, and now we are discussing issues of economic cooperation in the Caspian Sea, and all these require serious work and preparation. The Baku meeting is certainly of an interim working character, but nevertheless I hope that during this meeting a constructive dialogue will be held on these topics.”
Mikheyev is most interested in the information about the possible expansion of economic cooperation, the possible preparation of a cooperation agreement for the five Caspian states, and, in particular, information that has come from Turkmenistan about the initiative of the President of the state, Berdimuhamedov, on the possible establishment of a Caspian Economic Forum. “Dmitry Medvedev put forward the idea of creating the Caspian Economic Cooperation Organization, which would unite the five Caspian states not only in the form of some economic integration, but cooperation as well. This cooperation, in my opinion, is necessary for the Caspian countries. This applies to their use, transportation, and environmental problems. Only a five-sided format of economic cooperation, it seems to me, can develop into some optimal form of work, which will take into account the interests of all five states.”
According to Mikheyev, the Caspian Sea is seen primarily as a source of hydrocarbons, but for the countries of the Caspian region, there is an understanding that to count only on hydrocarbons as the only industrial development is meaningless: “All those who more or less understand the prospects suggest financing of other industries, first of all technical innovation from the revenue of the oil and gas industries, and it is a realistic prospect. And some oil-producing countries are doing this and have achieved very significant success in this direction.”
The countries of the Caspian Five have demonstrated little progress in these issues. “We do pump oil, we do pump gas, we deliver it through pipelines, but we cannot say that we are really developing the Caspian Sea region by itself, that we are preparing prospects for future generations, that we are thinking seriously about how to make the Caspian Sea not only a gas station, but a source of some innovative future. However, it could become the subject not only of some discussions, but also for real cooperation in the framework of a possible five-sided association.”
