Russia, Iran Discuss Caspian Legal StatusRussian and Iranian officials are holding talks in Tehran to try to narrow their differences on the legal status of Caspian Sea, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Sunday.Iranian Foreign Ministry's Press and Information Department confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy on Caspian Sea Affairs Viktor Kalyuzhny has come to Tehran and held the first round of meeting with Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Euro- American Affairs Ali Ahani. The two sides reviewed the latest developments with regards to the legal regime of the Caspian, and expressed their views on ways of finalizing the Caspian legal status based on the consensus of its five littoral states of Iran, Russian, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. On Thursday, Kalyuzhny arrived in Baku for talks with Azeri officials on the same issue. Before that, the Russian envoy had held similar talks with Turkmen and Kazakh officials respectively. The five Caspian coastal states were originally due to convene a summit meeting in early March in Turkmenistan to sign a framework of the Caspian legal regime, but they delayed it to this autumn because of differences on the formula. Iran has indicated that it will agree to an equal sharing, or 20 percent, of the oil-rich Caspian Sea, an formula opposed by Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which favor a principle of dividing the sea bed according to the amount of coastline each state has. |
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