Iran to Host International Conference on Caspian Sea

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Iran to Host International Conference on Caspian Sea

An international conference will open in Iran on Saturday to deal with challenges on the land-locked Caspian Sea with rich oil and gas resources, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.

An international conference will open in Iran on Saturday to deal with challenges on the land-locked Caspian Sea with rich oil and gas resources, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.

Sadeq Kharazi, Iranian deputy foreign minister for Education and Research, told IRNA that the two-day gathering will touch upon Caspian Sea's legal regime, recent developments in the region as well as geopolitics, economic cooperation and cultural-social- indigenous problems related to the sea.

The conference will be attended by experts and researchers from 20 countries, including five littoral states -- Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, as well as Armenia, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, Italy, Japan and the United States.

Kharazi said that 90 articles have so far been submitted to the conference's secretariat, two thirds of which belong to foreign intellectuals, and 65 of the total have been selected for presentations at the conference.

On the sidelines of the conference, deputy foreign ministers and representatives of the littoral states will also hold a meeting to exchange views on the policies of their own governments on Caspian Sea, he said.

The Caspian Sea is estimated to contain the world's third largest reserves of oil and gas after the Persian Gulf and Siberia.

Among the five littoral states, Iran and Turkmenistan have pushed for dividing the sea into five equal sectors, while Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia contend that the sea floor should be divided into national sectors.

Because of the long-standing differences, a summit meeting on the division of the sea has been postponed for several times. Meanwhile, the five countries have also worried about Western interference in the Caspian issue.

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