On Friday, deputy-FMs of all five countries including Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Republic of Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, signed the 45th statement about the legal status and regime of the Caspian Sea. Astana meeting in July will address the remaining issues over the legal status. Speculations indicates some level of progress in discussions of the regime.
The meeting was held in Foreign Ministry building in Moscow. Legal status and regime has been the major source of controversy for the years after 1991 and formation of three independent countries out of Soviet Socialist Republics which posed difficulties for the new definition of the legal regime.
As the largest land-locked lake of the world, Caspian Sea has modest reserves of 50bn barrels of crude oil and an estimated amount of 257 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The first of such littoral countries’ meetings was held in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan in May 2002 where all littoral countries agreed on cooperation about addressing environmental threats to ecosystem; the meeting was predecessor for Tehran Convention held November 5 2003 which was signed by the highest political officials of littoral states.
The Convention was ratified by legislative bodies of all countries as law. The second meeting was held again in Tehran in October 2007 which addressed security, terrorism and extremism.
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