Caspian Sea Status Back on the Agenda

The long-running dispute over who owns what in the Caspian Sea may be a little closer to a resolution when the five littoral states - Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakstan and Turkmenistan - meet in Iran on February 27-28. They plan to agree a draft declaration on the sea’s status, and to set a date for a presidential summit. This replaces an earlier plan which would have seen the summit take place only after a convention defining the sea’s legal status had been drawn up – a distant prospect, since this issue has been under discussion for the last 15 years. Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Russia want to divide the sea along a median line, whereas Iran wants a division based on equal shares. Turkmenistan wants any boundaries to take national oil and gas fields into account.