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Russia Reluct to Share the Caspian
// Tehran Hosts Conference of Caspian Sea Littoral Countries, But Problems Remain
Yesterday Tehran hosted a meeting of the foreign ministers of the five countries that surround the Caspian Sea: Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The ministers met to plan a summit focusing on the Caspian Sea, a project that has been foundering for the last five years. Yesterday's meeting again failed to resolve key differences of opinion among the participants, and it will now fall to the leaders of the five countries to resolve the problems.
The first summit of the Caspian Sea countries took place in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan in April 2002. At that summit, the presidents of the five countries agreed that they would meet every year and that the next summit would take place in Tehran. Five years have passed since then, and the Tehran summit still has not become a reality. The issue is that an agreement between the five countries calls for their leaders to adopt a convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, but the various governments have so far been unable to come to a consensus on the terms of the convention. The recent conference of foreign ministers similarly failed at that task, candidly admitted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday. "It is clear that the convention will not be ready for the highest-level meeting (between the presidents)," he said at the very beginning of the forum. To keep the second summit from being postponed indefinitely, Mr. Lavrov suggested the drafting of an "interim document that would enact rules governing the use of the Caspian that are as general and acceptable to all as possible." According to that idea, the declaration adopted at the summit will mention only those regulations concerning the future status of the Caspian Sea that do not provoke objections from the individual governments. The regulations that the different sides cannot see eye to eye on will not be included in the declaration. Instead, they will be put on the agenda for discussion by the five leaders at the summit. This proposal signifies Russia's decision to kick the thorniest problems further upstairs, to the presidential level. Yesterday Sergei Lavrov mentioned two key problems that the leaders of the five countries must resolve: the drawing of international boundaries on the Caspian Sea and the issue of military exercises in the area. These two problems are interrelated, and the Russian position on them differs from that of at least three of the other four countries. Moscow is indignant that Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan are stubbornly holding out for the complete and final division of the Caspian Sea into spheres of national territory. Not only that, but these three countries are already unilaterally establishing their sovereignty over "their" portions of the Caspian. A source close to the negotiations told Kommersant that if the Caspian Sea is divided into national territories, Russia will suffer significant losses primarily in terms of its fishing industry in the Caspian region, since the Russian sector is the one poorest in fish. That's not Russia's biggest worry, however. The division of the Caspian Sea into sectors will make it easier to lay pipelines along the bottom of the sea to transport energy products from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to Europe, thus bypassing Russia. In addition, much to Russia's displeasure, after the division of the Caspian the surrounding countries would gain the right to consent to a foreign military presence such as the US Navy or NATO in their sectors. From Moscow's point of view, the weak links in the circle of countries surrounding the Caspian Sea are Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, the two countries that have recently been drifting furthest to the west on the issue of military activities in the Caspian region. For example, Baku has made several excuses for its refusal to accept a Russian proposal for an agreement that would prohibit the presence of "third-party" naval vessels in the region and that would create "Kasfor," a five-state naval group based in the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan is much more interested in the American "Caspian Defense" project. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan, while it is more flexible on the Russian initiatives, is getting Moscow's back up with its insistence on the idea of equalizing the weapons arsenals all around the Caspian Sea. The implementation of that idea would lead to a significant decrease in Russia's military presence in the region. It turns out that Russia's only remaining ally in the Caspian region is Iran. Tehran likes the Russian idea of creating Kasfor, and it does not support plans to lay trans-Caspian pipelines that would bypass Russia. Thus, the fact that the next Caspian summit will take place in Tehran does a lot for Moscow's chances against its opponents.
Gennady Sysoyev
All the Article in Russian as of June 21, 2007
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