In the Caspian Sea - neither two nor one and a half

The main “Caspians” of the five countries finished conferring in Moscow

Today in Moscow the 10th meeting of the Special Working Group (SWG) on the Caspian Sea at the level of deputy foreign ministers of the five Caspian states - Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan - ends. Opening the anniversary meeting of the Joint Working Group on July 22, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, without much optimism, defined the task facing his colleagues: “To bring closer positions on the main provisions of the convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea.”

Considering that the head of the Russian delegation, Special Representative of the Russian President for Caspian Affairs Viktor Kalyuzhny noted before the start of the JWG that about 30% of the text of the convention had been agreed upon, then we can assume that today, at the final press conference, the heads of delegations will want to name an even larger percentage of the agreed articles of the main Caspian document, on which “positions are brought closer together.” But even if something like this happens, it will only be evidence of the diplomatic skill of the negotiators, since in reality the Moscow meeting of the AWG only recorded that the long-term process of resolving the Caspian problem is, at best, marking time. And at worst, it even rolls back...

And the point is not even that at each meeting of the working group, its participants are forced to once again go through the already agreed upon articles of the convention due to the fact that new nuances appear in the position of the interested parties that require additional discussion. The main problem is that the fundamental philosophy of the Caspian settlement proposed by Russia - “we divide the bottom - the water is common” - and, it would seem, accepted by Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, has encountered an insurmountable obstacle. In essence, no one except Russia wants to see a “common” surface of the Caspian Sea. To varying degrees, but all of Moscow’s Caspian partners are actually striving to establish state borders in the Caspian Sea.

This is exactly what the calls of some delegations, voiced again at the Moscow meeting, to apply to the Caspian Sea the principles of the International Convention on the Law of the Sea, which, as has been said more than once, is not applicable to this inland body of water, boil down to. The logical result of this approach of the majority of the “Caspians” was that last year’s proposal by Russian President Putin to designate for each of the five countries a 15-mile coastal zone under their national jurisdiction, which Igor Ivanov again recalled before the start of the meeting in Moscow, was actually met with hostility at the meeting of the AWG. The representative of Turkmenistan did not agree with this, demanding that several dozen more miles of fishing zone be added to the coastal zone for exclusively national use. The delegation of Kazakhstan took a similar position.

But if we divide the Caspian Sea into sectors, then it is obvious that the boundaries of these sectors must be protected as state borders. Consequently, military border guard structures should appear at sea, including aviation that controls the airspace of these sectors. But in this case, calls for demilitarization of the Caspian Sea, again heard at the Moscow meeting, are nothing more than empty rhetoric.

If you sum up the ten past meetings of the JWG, you inevitably come to the conclusion that the current situation in the Caspian Sea - neither two nor one and a half - suits everyone. This became especially obvious after the division of the Caspian seabed, which allowed at least three countries - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia - to begin to develop its oil and gas resources. And countries such as Turkmenistan and Iran should use the Caspian “square of the circle” for their own internal political purposes. Ashgabat demonstrates, as it did now in Moscow, its independence from it, regularly rejecting all Russian initiatives. And Iranian diplomacy, under pressure from the parliamentary opposition in its country, is trying to appear adamant in defending “national interests” demanding that Iran be given 20% of the Caspian waters.

Moreover, at the meeting in Moscow, it became clear that the signing of the already agreed upon framework convention on the protection of the Caspian environment, scheduled for November, may not take place. The Azerbaijani delegation has new questions; Baku insists on the principle of rotation of governing bodies and the location of the headquarters of the environmental protection organization. The next meeting of the JWG is scheduled to take place in Ashgabat in the fall. And when the next Caspian summit will take place in Tehran is completely unknown.

Arkady DUBNOV