Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkmenistan's Foreign Ministry hosts the 47th meeting of authorized representatives of the Caspian littoral states in which heads and leading experts of the relevant ministries and departments of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan participate, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan reported.

The main topic on the agenda of the meeting is to prepare draft documents designed to fill up the legal base for state cooperation in the region.

During the meeting, the experts had detailed, interesting exchange of views on the draft agreement on cooperation of the Caspian states in the field of transport developed by the Turkmen side.

The Caspian region is one of the major geopolitical, economic, energy, transport and communication centers on the Eurasian space today.

The maximum use of the capacity of the Caspian Sea as large communication hub of continental importance is a strategic direction which opens the prospects of essential expansion for trade and economic relations, both between the Caspian countries and in respect of their entry into the world markets. The Agreement envisions the creation of the Caspian regional transport and logistics center.

Participants of the meeting noted the importance of the introduced draft Agreement the development and signing of which will help to activate traditional ties between the Caspian littoral states having all opportunities for considerable building-up of partnership in the transport sphere.

The Caspian Sea is the biggest enclosed body of water on Earth, with enormous deposits of oil and gas as well as rich fisheries. It plays an important role in the transport corridors, along with being an important part of the international and regional projects.

The five coastal states -- Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Iran -- signed a framework convention on the protection of the marine environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.

A key problem to further development in the region is the unresolved status of the Caspian Sea and the water boundaries among the five littoral states.

The legal status has remained unsolved during the past two decades, preventing development and exploitation of its disputable oil and gas fields and creating obstacles to the realization of major energy projects.

Azerbaijan proposes that the Caspian Sea must be divided into national sectors based on the “median line” principles since it is an international boundary lake.

In turn, Iran and Turkmenistan oppose Azerbaijan’s position considering that the Caspian Sea must be divided into equal parts between the pre-Caspian countries so that each country must have 20 percent of the sea.

---

Gunay Hasanova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @gunhasanova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz