Baku is hosting a meeting of deputy foreign ministers of the Caspian littoral states to hammer out a draft agreement on security cooperation.
Azerbaijan's foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, addressed the official opening of the meeting today.
'We believe that the coordination of the positions of the Caspian littoral states [Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran] on the principal aspects in the coordination of the draft conventions on the legal status of the Caspian Sea will provide the basis for the next summit of the heads of the Caspian littoral states.'
'All the Caspian coastal states should step up their work if the next summit, which will be held in Baku, is to be successful,' the minister said.
He said that 'many important elements still remain open' in the draft convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. The minister listed as outstanding the use of the water surface, completion of delimitation of the seabed, fishing, shipping and security, including demilitarization and the movement of warships.
He hoped that the Baku meeting would finalize the text of an agreement on cooperation of the border and customs services and internal affairs bodies on ensuring security in the Caspian. Mammadyarov said that the draft agreement envisaged cooperation on tackling terrorism and organized crime, arms, nuclear materials and drugs trafficking, human trafficking and illegal migration. Cooperation will consist of exchanging information and experience and joint actions.
'The agreement also envisages meetings and consultations of the competent bodies at least once a year,' Mammadyarov said.
'The military political aspects of security in the Caspian should be resolved as part of the draft convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea,' the minister said.
Russia
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov is representing Russia at the meeting. 'We attach exceptional importance to the fact that, thanks to the initiative of our Azerbaijani colleagues, we have managed to organize this second round of negotiations,' he said.
'In October last year we started working on a draft agreement, which we expect will enable multilateral cooperation in countering the new risks and challenges in security, ranging from the fight against the trafficking of components supplied for weapons of mass destruction in the Caspian Sea up to the fight against drugs, poaching and piracy, rescue and assistance in coping with emergencies at sea, and so on,' the deputy minister said.
'All these questions naturally bring our countries together. We must find a new foothold in interaction between the Caspian states. Development of this agreement should be a step towards preparing for the next summit of the Caspian littoral states, which will be held in Baku, as agreed earlier. The Russian delegation is ready for hard work in the next two days, we think that we can get through the text, as advances in the first round were good, although there is a lot to do – of course, the views of the parties are not always identical on the scope and nature of interaction, but all this is surmountable, since the main point is that there is the political will on the part of all participants in the negotiations to produce a decent draft agreement,' Ryabkov said.
'Russia is strictly guided by the understanding which was reached at the highest level in the beginning of the process. We want the cooperation to be specifically aimed at the result and not limited to information exchange, and included some joint actions and operations. We want the coordination between the countries to be conducted on a rotational basis, and we think that many of our proposals have already been taken into account by our partners', concluded Ryabkov.
Iran
Iran hopes to achieve positive results in addressing the problems of the Caspian Sea, said Mehdi Safari, special representative of the Iranian president and the country's representative in negotiations on the problems of the Caspian Sea.
'The first meeting on coordination of the draft agreement on security in the Caspian Sea took place last year, the second meeting will be held soon, and I hope that we will achieve positive results', Safari told journalists in Baku before the start of the second extraordinary meeting on a draft agreement on security in the Caspian Sea.
Safari also expressed hope that the Caspian states would be able to achieve positive results in the protection of the bioresources of the Caspian.
'We will work to quickly implement the additional protocols,' he said when asked about the upcoming meeting. 'Some of the Caspian littoral states should cooperate in order to sign the protocols,' Safari said. 'We hope that they will soon be signed, and we will achieve positive results.'