BAKU, July 13 (RIA Novosti, Gerai Dadashev) - Azerbaijan and Iran will continue their successful cooperation, Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev told Iran's representative to the Caspian talks Mehdi Safari Wednesday.
Aliyev hailed the way the two countries had worked to implement bilateral economic treaties and projects in the energy sector and road construction.
Safari said Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad was intent on developing friendly and fraternal relations between Azerbaijan and Iran, which is in various estimates home to more than 10 million ethnic Azerbaijanis, exceeding the number of Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan 1.5-fold. A total of about 40 million ethnic Azerbaijanis live around the world.
Safari was expected to meet with Azerbaijani Prime Minister Artur Racizade, Foreign Minister Elmar Mamediyarov and Khalaf Khalafov, his deputy, to discuss bilateral relations and the Caspian's status, Safari's responsibility since his leaving his post as ambassador to Russia.
Activities in the Caspian are still regulated by the treaties signed by the former Soviet Union and Iran. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia have proposed dividing the Caspian's floor along the modified median line. The littoral states would thereby be able to exercise their right to the Caspian's mineral and biological resources, while the water space would remain common.
However, the countries have major differences on the problem.
"The most serious differences are over delimitation issues," Viktor Kalyuzhny, Russia's envoy to the Caspian talks said. "Iran continues to insist on dividing the Caspian into equal parts among the littoral states. The other countries have taken separate approaches to the floor, resources and water areas of the sea."
Russia has proposed assigning 15-mile-long offshore zones for each country where mineral resources production would have been banned.
