"We are moving towards the hard core and the closer we are, the stronger the resistance. Small wonder that we are moving literally by the millimeter," said Russian representative at the Tehran sitting Alexander Golovin, head of the Caspian working group at the Russian Foreign Ministry.
"A number of disputable questions remain. Still, none of the past conferences or today's one were futile," Golovin said.
If no legal status for the Caspian is eventually drawn up, armed conflicts may follow, the diplomat warned. "We are for a balance of arms in the region within the framework of reasonable sufficiency," he added.
Representatives of the five Caspian states - Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - have once again reaffirmed the inadmissibility of presence or interference of extra-regional states in the Caspian affairs.
The sitting ended up with the passing of a joint communique.
The conferees state in the communique that during the two days they have laid down the positions of the Caspian states on the key questions of the legal status and different aspects of Caspian cooperation.
A regular, 18th, session of the working group for the convention will take place in Baku. A date has not been fixed.
Following the establishment in the early 1990s of independent states replacing the former USSR, it is now necessary to develop and adopt a new procedure for using the Caspian riches in the interests of each Caspian and other involved states, fix a legal status for the Caspian sea which would be recognized by the international community. Such a document is to be the convention on the legal status of the Caspian sea, to be adopted only by a consensus of all the five Caspian states.
The positions of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on the division of the Caspian today actually coincide with Russia's. In Moscow, Astana and Baku they have reached agreement on dividing the Caspian floor according to the national sectors along the so-called modified median line, leaving the sea for common use. This has enabled the three states to agree upon the delimitation of the Caspian floor on the adjacent sectors and conclude bilateral agreements for the exercise of sovereign rights on the use of minerals.
But, the main stumbling block on the key issue - how the Caspian is to be divided - is the position of Iran, claiming 20 percent of the water area. The initial principle determining what part of the Caspian is to be passed under the national jurisdiction of each of the littoral states relied on the length of the shoreline. The Iranian portion is only 14 percent of the Caspian perimeter. Iranian diplomacy pinned high hopes on the second summit of the Caspian Five, which was due in Tehran in the second half of 2004. At the last moment, it was put off to 2005.
