In a meeting with Mr. Ali Ahani, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for the Euro-American Affairs and the country’s Special Envoy for the Caspian Sea, Mr. Aliev agreed that a series of problems exist that should be solved through regular deliberations among the representatives of all the five states surrounding the Caspian Sea, ie Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Azerbaijan.

Ahani made the remarks during the fourth meeting of the deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea in Baku.

The meeting, started Friday, discussed different Caspian issues including its legal regime, the statement of the Caspian Sea Summit and viewpoints of the littoral states on the system for exploitation of the sea's resources.

In a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, the deputy foreign ministers called for paving the way for an upcoming summit of the Caspian States.

Iran has repeatedly indicated that it will agree to an equitable sharing of the sea's resources, which would give it a 20 percent share.

The Iranian official told the conference that that consensus of the five states is a "prerequisite" for formulating a legal system for the Caspian Sea, observing, "any bilateral or tripartite accords in this respect will not work".

Ahani said any move to unilaterally exploit the sea-bed resources of the Caspian Sea is "illegitimate", adding that countries that decide to unilaterally exploit the Caspian Sea resources would be legally responsible for their actions.
He latter told a press conference here that this important point has been revealed to all that bilateral or trilateral agreement in the absence of the collective consensus will fail to prove effective.

Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also have no differences over the matter, the diplomat said. "A mechanical division of the Caspian Sea is inadmissible," Abykayev said, adding that the size of national sectors depends on the national coastline.

Experts think that Iran can aspire to 13 per cent of the sea proceeding from this method.

The three are agreed in principle on a division that would give them shares extending out from their respective coastlines. Where national zones met in the middle of the sea, borders would be equidistant from the facing coastlines

Turkmenistan agrees "in principle but not in method", the diplomat says, posing another obstacle to any quick agreement.

Turkmenistan wants the borderline in the middle of the sea - where its zone would meet that of Azerbaijan - to be drawn using a more approximate method, the diplomat said. This would give it a slightly larger share of a mid-sea area where some of the best oil prospects lie.

An equidistant method of dividing the seabed would give Iran, to the south, only about 12 per cent of it. So Iran continues to insist on an equal division of the seabed, giving it a full 20 per cent, the diplomat said.

At a conference on the Caspian in Astrakhan, an Iranian official said, in a sharply worded speech, that the collapse of the Soviet Union had led to "co-operation, but, unfortunately, also to confrontation" around the sea.

The official, Firooz Dowlat-Abadi, the Iranian foreign ministry's director-general for relations with countries of the former Soviet Union, warned the newly-independent Caspian countries against rushing to sign contracts with foreign oil firms without due regard for the rights of their neighbours.

The result would be "an unhealthy situation among the Caspian governments", he warned. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Dowlat Abadi said Iran's absolute preference was not to divide the Caspian into national sectors but for the countries around the sea to use it by consensus.

Failing that, he said, if there were to be national divisions, then Iran wanted each country to have a 20 per cent share of the sea. "Of course, if there is a better suggestion we are ready to look at it", he said.

Caspian declaration by Russia and Iran has drawn criticism from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The episode has turned into a diplomatic embarrassment for Moscow and a setback to its plans for dividing the Caspian on its terms.

A Caspian agreement with Iran had backfired badly on Russia after both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan raised strong objections to the deal.

Russia's Caspian envoy, Viktor Kalyuzhny, bore the brunt of the complaints. During a visit to Kazakhstan, he was called upon to explain the declaration made on 12 March by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Mohammed Khatami in Moscow.

Speaking to reporters in Astana, Kalyuzhny could do little more than admit to what he called "a certain coolness in relations between Russia and Kazakhstan" as a result of the accord with Iran and to offer a series of contradictions aimed at calming tempers down.

The incident was the latest chapter in the decade-long search for a formula to divide the oil-rich waterway among the five-shoreline states.

Top officials in Kazakhstan were clearly angered by the Russian agreement with Iran, stating that: "Until the legal regime of the Caspian Sea is finalised, the parties do not officially acknowledge any boundaries on this sea."

Russia and Iran also said that: "The parties openly declare their disagreement to laying any trans-Caspian oil and natural gas pipeline on the seabed. That would be dangerous in the environmental sense in conditions of extreme geodesic activity."

In addition, the two countries stated that: "Any decision and agreements referring to the legal status and use of the Caspian Sea will only have force if they are approved on general consent of the five littoral states." In other words, no oil contracts or bilateral pacts would be considered valid until they were approved by Russia and Iran.

Kazakh Prime Minister Kasymzhomart Tokaev said the statement went against his country's 1998 agreement with Russia on dividing the seabed in the northern Caspian.

On 13 March, an unnamed senior diplomatic source in Azerbaijan raised similar objections, telling Russia's Interfax news agency that Moscow's Iranian pact was inconsistent with its recent Caspian agreement with Baku.

President Khatami's historic visit to Russia turned into a fiasco for Moscow on the Caspian issue after the two sides failed to agree on a division formula in time for the trip. Diplomats apparently felt pressured to make some sort of statement on common principles anyway, but found the task difficult because Russia and Iran remain so far apart.

Iran's persistence forced postponement of a Caspian summit this month amid predictions that a breakthrough would be made in Moscow first. But the breakthrough never came, and the badly worded joint statement only succeeded in offending the two countries with which Moscow had already reached accords -- Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, Ahani and his Russian counterpart denounced any interference of the foreign countries in Caspian Sea affairs, referring to rumours that Baku is discussing offering military bases to both the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
According to the Iranian diplomat, the scepticism of major world oil companies on investment in the Caspian Sea has its roots in the present status of the Sea and its consequences. ENDS CASPIAN SEA 17601