Abrar Hussain: Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Sunday at the small Kazakh coastal city of Aktau to sign a legal convention regarding the Caspian Sea.
After more than 20 years of intense diplomatic efforts, the five coastal Caspian nations – Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan – agreed upon a legal framework for sharing the world’s largest inland body of water, which bridges Asia and Europe and has reserves of oil and gas as well as being a habitat for sturgeon.
The diplomats described the document as a ‘regional constitution’.
“Our summit is exceptional if not truly epoch making,” Putin said to all the foreign ministers and leaders present in the room.
Rouhani thanked his Caspian partners of support, saying, “Today we have taken a very important step but we should recognise there are more important issues that need to be addressed.”
It has been speculated that this was a hard-won diplomatic victory as Iranian analysts reported that Tehran was “50:50” on signing. The main sticking point was how to apportion the seabed. Many favored division by a line equidistant from the five coastlines, but Iran – with the smallest coastline – did not.
Meanwhile, Russia hesitated in allowing Turkmenistan to continue a proposed 300km gas pipeline to Azerbaijan, which would open up its huge, cheap, gas reserves to a European market that is currently dominated by Russia’s Gazprom.
On Sunday, the five nations agreed to 15 miles of sovereign waters, in addition to a further 10 nautical miles of fishing area, beyond which there would be common waters.
-Source: The Guardian