Azernews.Az

The positions of the Caspian coastal countries on the legal status of the sea have drawn closer, but the differences have not yet been resolved, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Friday, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Ryabkov was reporting to parliament ahead of ratification of an agreement on security cooperation in the Caspian Sea. While discussing the document, parliament members asked how long the talks on the Caspian status will take and at what stage the negotiating process currently is.

Ryabkov stressed that the status issue is quite complicated given that it has been regulated throughout Russia’s history only by Soviet-Iranian treaties.

He stressed that the lack of a final agreement on the basin’s status, which is pending, should not prevent cooperation among the coastal nations to meet security challenges.

The agreement on security cooperation among Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran was signed in Baku in November 2010 after a summit of the Caspian countries’ leaders. The agreement does not cover issues concerning military aspects of security. One of the key provisions of the document says that the security in the Caspian is the prerogative of the coastal nations.

The agreement creates legal basis for the cooperation of secret services and law enforcement agencies of the participating countries in such areas as combating terrorism, organized crime, human trafficking and illegal migration.

Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement in 2001 on dividing the Caspian’s northern area into national sectors, with Azerbaijan and Russia each possessing 19 percent, while the Central Asian state received 29 percent. However, the other two coastal nations, Iran and Turkmenistan, did not sign the agreement.

Iran wants all resources shared equally among five states, even though its coast accounts for less than 14 percent.