CHALLENGING IRAN, US SAYS IT BACKS CASPIAN BILATERAL ACCORDS
BAKU, 17 May (IPS) In an provocative challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States warned that it supports bilateral agreements among the Caspian Sea littoral states defining their borders both on the Sea’s surface and bed waters.
The move was announced Thursday in Baku by the US State Department's Caspian Envoy Steven Mann in Baku, stating that Washington backs bilateral deals on dividing the oil-rich Caspian Sea bed by the countries bordering the energy-rich Caspian Sea.
Among the five nations that shares the Caspian, world biggest lake, Iran is the only one that staunchly opposes any bilateral agreement aimed at sharing the waters according to internationally accepted principles, insisting that in the absence of any collective decision, old accords signed between Iran and the former Soviet Union are still valid.
Mann said a pact on Caspian borders signed earlier this week between Russia and Kazakhstan was "a positive step and we would welcome the signing of similar agreements between Russia and Azerbaijan".
Tehran denounced the Moscow-Astana agreement as "illegal" and reminded that in their last Summit held a month ago in the Turkmen Capital of Eshqabad, the presidents of Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan "agreed not to agree" on any bilateral move.
"Iran is against any unilateral act and foreign interference in determining the legal status of the Caspian Sea" Iranian President Mohammad Khatami commented immediately after the public announcement that Russia had reached an agreement with Kazakhstan on sharing their portions of the Sea and it will soon sign a similar accord with neighbouring Azerbaijan.
Angry Iranian media and lawmakers also accused Moscow of "cowardice" and sharply criticised the government for its "weak diplomacy" on the Caspian Sea by having counted on the Russian backing of its stand on the controversial issue.
Last July, Iran sent gunboats and warplanes to prevent research ships exploring on behalf of the Azerbaijan’s National Oil Company SOCAR in an area of the Caspian claimed by both Tehran and Baku.
Though Azerbaijan backed off, preventing a possible war, but Ankara, Baku’s main ally -- and itself enjoying the backing of Washington and Tel-Aviv as well as that of Russia--, warned Tehran not to repeat the measure or to face Turkey’s military might.
Mann, who met on Thursday with Azeri president Heydar Aliyev, also underlined US backing for the planned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will export Caspian oil to the Turkish Mediterranean, bypassing Iranian routes.
"This project has economic and intellectual arguments in its favour which allow us to say that BTC will be beneficial not just for Azerbaijan but for the whole region", the French news agency Agence France Presse quoted Mann as having said after meetings with both SOCAR’s officials and the western oil majors involved in the pipeline project.
"There are certain issues connected to BTC that we have to resolve but they are not that important and will not have a significant affect on the progress of the project", he said.
Though experts acknowledges that transporting Caspian oil and gas, --estimated to be world’s most important after the Persian Gulf and Russia – to Europe via Iran is the most rational and economic, yet Washington, which has imposed unilateral economic sanctions on Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979, particularly in the energy sector, has successfully barred that route, thus depriving the Islamic Republic from billions of US Dollars in royalty bounties.
Russia has also opposed the pipeline, which will be the first Caspian oil export route to bypass Russian territory alike.
The US oil companies-led international consortium behind the 2.8 billion dollar (3.086 billion euro) BTC pipeline is due to give the go-ahead next month for the start of construction. ENDS CASPIAN US 17502