Caspian Deputy FMs Open Meeting to Debate Legal Status
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and the Russian President's Special Envoy on Caspian affairs Viktor Kalyuzhny in his opening address expressed hope that the two-day meeting would create an amicable atmosphere to explore the avenues for resolving the disputes over the legal status of the sea.
He pointed to the last year visit of an Iranian delegation to the Russian state Duma to talk about the Caspian issue, and said the visit demonstrated the bilateral and multilateral interest of the littoral states to complete the legal regime of the sea.
Kalyuzhny stressed the role of Iran in Caspian issues as significant. He expressed pleasure with appointment of the ex-Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Mehdi Safari as Iran's special representative for Caspian affairs.
In related news, Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyuacheslav Trubnikov called the Wednesday meeting an "important step" towards solving the Caspian issue.
Trubnikov hoped that the meeting would pave the way for the upcoming summit of Caspian Sea heads of state in Ashkhabad to sketch out the legal regime of the resourceful sea.
Today's meeting of the Caspian Sea littoral states was held behind the closed doors. The representatives of participating states are to inform the press about the results of their Wednesday talks on Thursday.
Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, the five coastal states bordering the Caspian Sea, have still to come up with a formula over the legal regime of the sea to exploit its resources.
Iran advocates an equitable sharing of sea resources while at the same time calling for a condominium-common sovereignty- over the sea, and rejects any unilateral move from the littoral states before the issue of legal regime of the world's largest inland sea is settled.
The Islamic Republic sees the Iran-Russia agreements of 1921 and 1940 as the most valid touchstone to sketch out the legal regime of the sea.