Iran and Four Other Countries Meet to Determine Legal Regime of the Caspian Sea

Leaders of Iran and four neighboring countries around the Caspian Sea will gather on Sunday to sign a convention regarding this resource-rich sea, known for its energy resources and caviar, in Kazakhstan. The Iranian President described today's meeting as 'very important' before his departure to Kazakhstan. It is expected that the parties will limit military presence in the Caspian Sea to the five surrounding countries: Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, and agree on some legal issues. A day before the summit of the five countries, their foreign ministers met and discussed in Aktau, on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea. During that meeting, a member of the Islamic Republic delegation announced that no document regarding the countries' shares of the Caspian Sea would be signed at the leaders' summit on Sunday. Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, also told reporters on August 21 that 'the limits of the seabed and subsoil in this agreement are not clear and will be determined in the future.' He reminded that 'this is one of the issues that has been negotiated for 22 years regarding the Caspian Sea among these five countries.' This issue has also been emphasized in a statement from the Kremlin. The Russian government stated that it has been over two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union for the leaders of the five countries to gather for signing the convention in Kazakhstan. Discussions about whether the Caspian is a sea or a lake have been ongoing since 1991, and the five countries have yet to reach a final agreement on drafting a new and comprehensive legal regime. Over the past two and a half decades, four summits of leaders and 51 expert meetings have been held to draft the legal regime convention of the Caspian Sea. The Islamic Republic President stated, 'The convention specifies that all legal issues of the Caspian Sea can only be implemented and executed with the consensus of the five countries, which is a very important and fundamental point that completely separates the legal regime of this sea from the conventions of seas.' According to Rouhani, 'Some issues have been resolved, and some issues remain.' Among the remaining issues, 'one is the baseline and the other is the limits of the seabed and subsoil' of the Caspian Sea. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated yesterday that the parties have agreed to start cooperation for the implementation of the convention immediately after its signing. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced after the August 20 meeting in Aktau that the foreign ministers of the five countries 'expressed their satisfaction with the level of cooperation and agreed on the manner and form of future actions related to the main issues after the signing of the convention.' In 2003, Russia signed a trilateral agreement with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to divide the resources of the seabed of the Caspian Sea. Thus, the three countries effectively exercised their sovereignty over a significant portion of energy resources in the northern part of this sea without an accepted legal regime convention from all five coastal countries; about 68% of the Caspian Sea's seabed is under the control of these three countries. Estimates suggest that the seabed of the Caspian contains approximately 50 billion barrels of oil and 9 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. This sea is the most important habitat for sturgeon in the world and consequently the main producer of one of the world's most expensive foods, caviar. However, environmental advocates have expressed concerns about the status of sturgeon fishing. Although the Caspian is considered a lake by geographical rules, it is larger than the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.