OREANDA-NEWS. November 05, 2009. The 26th meeting of the special workgroup for drafting the Convention of the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea at the level of the deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian states was opened in the capital of Turkmenistan.

The representative delegations from all the littoral countries - Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Russia arrived in Ashgabat to participate in the five-party meeting. Greeting the guests the hosts focused with satisfaction on the high effectiveness of the joint work done in the past years to draft the text of the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea noting that a characteristic feature of the negotiation process to determine the status of the Caspian Sea was the common willingness to make a compromise and find a mutually acceptable solution to this problem. It was noted that i was a constructive approach in the spirit of mutually respectful and transparent cooperation that to a larger extent had allowed bringing the views of the littoral states together and settle some critical issues.

Exchanging views the sides reaffirmed the common willingness to complete drafting the text of the Convention as the basic document regulating the activities of all kinds and cooperation among the littoral states as soon as possible. It was noted that the adoption of this document guaranteeing the perfect conditions to international cooperation in the Caspian region would contribute to solving the existing problems related to conservation, reproduction and use of biological resources of the Caspian Sea, merchant shipping and development and use of hydrocarbon resources of the seabed and depths of the Caspian Sea. In this regard the participants focused on the need to harmonize the conceptual provisions of the draft Convention relating to the delimitation of the seabed, depth and water area of the Caspian Sea, building of submarine pipelines and other issues.

Putting emphasis on the important results achieved including in particular the summits of the leaders of he Caspian states, which had been held in Ashgabat and Tehran, and the adoption of the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea signed in November 2003 and subsequently ratified by the parliaments of all the littoral states, the members of the delegations focused on the need to continue holding the consultations at various levels to harmonize further the neighbouring countries’ views and achieve a consensus on the status of the unique body of water.

The officials of the foreign ministries emphasized that despite the obvious success achieved in drafting the Convention there was much work to do. The participants were unanimous that today the Caspian states had approached a next stage in developing the international documents aimed at building the new architecture of regional relationships. In particular, the work to harmonize the draft Agreements of Cooperation on Security in the Caspian Sea region had been started. For this purpose, the first meeting of the littoral delegations had been conducted on October 22-23, 2009 in Baku.

During the first day of the meeting the representatives of the Caspian ‘five’ presented the countries’ views on the legal status of the Caspian Sea and put forward the proposals on various aspects of maritime cooperation.