| The Iranians became interested in him The Russian President's Special Representative for International Energy Cooperation, Igor Yusufov, met yesterday with the Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Gholamreza Shafei. This meeting marked the premiere of Mr. Yusufov in his new post: Vladimir Putin only signed a decree on his appointment at the end of last week. Previously, Igor Yusufov was approved as Ambassador of the Russian Foreign Ministry on special assignments. It is characteristic that in the official report about his meeting with the Iranian Ambassador, Mr. Yusufov’s Foreign Ministry position was not mentioned. This means that the position of special presidential envoy is much higher than the diplomatic rank. Mr. Yusufov’s predecessor in the post of special representative of the president, Viktor Kalyuzhny, dealt only with the problems of the Caspian Sea, but was also the deputy head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As you know, Mr. Kalyuzhny has now been appointed Russian Ambassador to Latvia.
Igor Yusufov's conversation with the Iranian ambassador was mainly devoted to solving the problem of the legal status of the Caspian Sea. It is no coincidence that the first person to meet with the newly appointed “Caspian” representative of Moscow was a representative of the Iranian leadership. In Tehran, more than in any other Caspian capital, they were puzzled by personnel changes in Russia in the Caspian direction, which is very sensitive for the Iranians. There are at least two reasons for this.
First, the Iranians are concerned about how these changes will affect the prospect of holding the second summit of the heads of the Caspian states in Tehran, scheduled for January 2005. And secondly, the Iranian leadership reacted with caution to the information that appeared in the press that the removal of Mr. Kalyuzhny was connected with his sharply negative attitude towards the prospect of an American military presence in the Caspian Sea. Naturally, at the meeting with Mr. Yusufov, it was extremely important for the Iranian Ambassador to obtain first-hand information whether the Russian position on this painful issue for Tehran had changed.
Something else is also important. The entire ten-year history of attempts to divide the Caspian Sea between Iran and the coastal countries formed as a result of the collapse of the USSR (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan) has left Tehran essentially in the position of the losing side. The process of signing bilateral agreements between Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on the division of the seabed of the northern part of the Caspian Sea, which began in 1998, made it possible for the oil companies of these countries to begin its full-scale resource development. Tehran's non-recognition of these agreements did not affect this process in any way. All these years, Iran has been trying to defend the principle of a “fair” division of the Caspian waters into five equal parts. Since this principle did not suit its neighbors, Tehran’s position became a stumbling block to achieving consensus in the Caspian Sea.
The first summit of the Caspian Five, held in April 2002 in Ashgabat, also ended in failure. Then the presidents failed to reach mutual understanding. As a result, about one and a half dozen meetings of the Special Working Group (SWG) on the Caspian Sea at the level of deputy foreign ministers managed to agree on only part of the articles of the future Convention on the Legal Status of the Sea. At the same time, the solution to fundamental issues of how to divide the Caspian Sea has reached a dead end.
The next meeting of the AWG is scheduled to take place in Moscow at the end of September. It is difficult to say whether it will be possible to agree on at least a date for the summit in Tehran. According to Vremya Novostei, an unexpected obstacle arose here. It was in January that Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov spoke out against the meeting in Tehran. He believes that the summit should wait until after the presidential elections in Iran, which are due to take place in May 2005. The current President of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, must be re-elected after the end of his second term in office, and Turkmenbashi apparently does not want the Tehran summit to be used in the electoral interests of Khatami's political heirs. The Turkmen leader has his own preferences; he hopes that Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has already held this post for two consecutive terms, can again be elected president of Iran.
In Moscow, it seems, the Turkmen leader does not take all these Iranian plans to heart. Turkmenbashi doesn’t want to go to Tehran in January, so there’s no need. In the end, Russia has already decided for itself the most important aspect of dividing the Caspian Sea; its resources have become available to it. For Tehran, it is much more important that President Putin can still come there in January on his long-promised state visit. But it hasn't been decided yet. Arkady DUBNOV |
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