MOSCOW Azeri Foreign Minister Vilayat Guliyev said here on Tuesday that Baku is at odds with the Iranian and Turkmen stances on the issue of a legal regime to govern the Caspian Sea.
He told reporters that Baku insists on a division of the Caspian Sea into national portions.
Guliyev noted that the Azeri standpoint is in harmony with Russia.
He, however, said that all issues relating to the Caspian Sea, including its legal regime, should be resolved by the five littoral states, namely, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Republic of Azerbaijan.
In early August, Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy on Caspian Affairs, who called on Tehran, asked for a speedy resolution of the issue.
During his meeting with the then Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Morteza Sarmadi, Viktor Kalyuzhny stressed that "Iran and Russia can, and must continue their negotiations for a resolution of the sea's legal regime." Sarmadi, who expressed Iran's willingness to cooperate to solve the problem, said that Iran would be willing to agree on an equitable sharing of the oil-rich Caspian, i.e., that Iran's share would be 20 percent.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, on several occasions had also discussed the urgent need for a clarification of the issue.
Kalyuzhny had toured Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan countries which, along with Russia and Iran, border the Caspian Sea. The purpose of his visits was to discuss proposals for determining the status of the Caspian, the world's largest inland sea.
The Caspian is estimated to contain the world's third largest reserves of oil and gas after the Persian Gulf and Siberia, prompting a bitter rivalry among the coastal nations since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said in June that his country was ready to share the sea's resources "equitably." (IRNA)