Iran has forced the postponement of a crucial Caspian Sea summit and President Mohammad Khatami intends to fly to Moscow as early as next week to negotiate face-to-face with President Vladimir Putin on how to share the sea's oil and gas riches, Russian and Iranian sources told Moscow Times Wednesday.
"The date will be set as soon as Putin returns from Korea," said one Russian official who asked that he not be named.
The Kremlin's special envoy for the Caspian, Viktor Kaluzhny, was quoted as saying Last month that the reformist Iranian president wouldn't visit Moscow until March 19.
But the postponement of the summit highlights the urgency felt by, and the deep divisions among, the five littoral states - Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan - on hammering out a legal framework for the management of the world's largest closed body of water, said the paper.
Analysts told the paper that “these divisions could delay the exploitation of the oil and gas lying below the surface of the Caspian, which is emerging as the world's third-largest oil-bearing region after the Persian Gulf and Siberia, which sandwich it.”
In addition to energy sharing, the report added, the five countries must agree on issues ranging from military to fishing and pollution. Iran is calling for a demilitarization of the sea, over-fishing is pushing the sturgeon toward extinction, and no system has been set up to establish responsibility for pollution.
At a meeting with visiting Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Losyukov early February, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi expressed his country’s satisfaction with the status quo of the Iranian-Russian relations.
Kharrazi said the two countries have an extensive potential for the expansion of bilateral, regional and international cooperation.
He welcomed Russia's presence in the Middle East and pointed out that the cooperation of the two countries in the Caspian Sea and the Middle East was yielding good results. He expressed hope that the forthcoming visit of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to Moscow would give a new impetus to Russian-Iranian relations.
For his part, Losyukov said that Russia was willing to develop relations with Iran in all the spheres. He expressed his belief that the visit of the Iranian president to Russia will open up a new period in bilateral relations of the two countries – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
