Caspian “Code of Conduct” Will Not Resolve Dispute

The five countries around the Caspian Sea have agreed to draft a “code of conduct” to prevent squabbles in the region, but NBCentralAsia experts say the bigger dispute over who actually owns what in the resource-rich sea will rage on.



On June 20, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested drawing up an interim agreement “setting out general rules of conduct” in the Caspian. He was speaking at a meeting in Tehran involving foreign ministers from Russia, Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran.



Only agreements that all five countries feel able to sign up to will be included in the “code of conduct”.



Talks on the most contentious issues of how the sea should be divided, and what military activity is permissible there, will take place at a meeting between the five presidents. No date has been set for the summit.



Kazak political scientist Nikolai Kuzmin says the interim agreement will result in consensus on some environmental and military arrangements, and is unlikely to move the negotiations process on the bigger issues.



Kuzmin said the current tendency is for Caspian states to sign bilateral agreements with each other in order to move ahead with oil field development.



Iran is also a major stumbling block in negotiations, according to Kazak political expert Aydos Sarimov, who says Tehran is stubbornly protecting its own interests “by all permissible and impermissible means”.



“That makes sense, since the economic stakes are so high. None of these countries is going to make concessions voluntarily,” he said.



This is a view shared by Rovshan Ibrahimov, head of the international relations department at Qafqaz University in Baku. He sees only environmental and economic agreements on the cards at this stage.



Turkmenistan does however hold the key to one possible avenue for progress. If it joined the trilateral agreements signed by Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakstan, it might be feasible to resurrect the Soviet-era agreement under which the USSR had one maritime sector and Iran the rest.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)