Caspian Sea Convention To Promote Cooperation Among Signatories - Kazakh Foreign Minister

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published August 14, 2018 | 02:33 PM

The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which the leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan signed on Sunday, lays "solid and efficient" groundwork for the five countries' cooperation, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said on Tuesday

ASTANA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2018) The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which the leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan signed on Sunday, lays "solid and efficient" groundwork for the five countries' cooperation, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said on Tuesday.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow signed the historic document, which had been 22 years in the making, in the southern Kazakh city of Aktau.

"With the signing of the convention, a solid and efficient framework for the development of large-scale cooperation on many areas between the Caspian states was created," Abdrakhmanov said.

Kazakhstan's top diplomat added that by signing the convention, the five leaders had proved their "firm commitment to the establishment of a zone of peace, security, cooperation and sustainable development in this huge region.

The division Caspian Sea among the five bordering states had been hampered by the fact that its legal status as either a sea or lake was to be determined; the two bodies of water are regulated by different provisions of international law.

The recently signed convention closed the door to this uncertainty by dividing the sea bed and subsoil between the five states on the basis of international law, while the major surface of the sea will be shared. The document regulates such issues as fishing and pipeline construction, establishes rules for maritime navigation in the sea, and bans any activities threatening the sea's biological resources.