Caspian Sea Accord – A Good Beginning

Date: 12 August 2018 - 21:50

News ID: ۵۶۲۴۰

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The signing of the legal status for the Caspian Sea yesterday by the Presidents of the five littoral states – Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and the Republic of Azerbaijan – in the Kazakh port city of Aktau, could be called an important step for regional solidarity.
The world’s largest inland sea, which is rich in marine life including the prized caviar, although a peaceful body of water devoid of regional rivalry and closed to international provocateurs in view of its geography, has assumed added importance due to discovery of large hydrocarbon reserves that requires proper demarcation of the marine borders of the five littoral states.
The Caspian Sea Convention has been drawn up in 24 articles with the most important highlights being a ban on military presence of any outside entity or transit of its military consignments, which effectively rules out leasing of military base to a foreign power.
President Hassan Rouhani and his four counterparts – Qurbanquly Berdy Muhamedov of Turkmenistan, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Ilham Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan – who signed the final draft were optimistic of close cooperation for resolving the rest of the problems through strategic cooperation.
The high-ranking officials of the five states signed six documents for cooperation in the field of economy, transportation, trade, border security, fight against terrorism, and campaign against organized crime.
It is indeed a good beginning and hopefully the marine borders would be properly demarcated for sustainable development of shipping, fisheries, oil, gas and other resources, with emphasis on maintaining the delicate ecology of the Caspian.
At the same time, littoral states should be careful in laying undersea oil and gas pipelines that may be harmful to the environment of the inland sea that has no outlet to the open oceans and where pollution would become an ecological disaster.
Russia has connected the Volga – the largest river that flows into the Caspian – to the Baltic Sea through a series of navigable canals via the Neva River, and also through the Volga–Don Canal to the Sea of Azov, on the Black Sea. It is also studying the feasibility of the Eurasia Canal to shorten the distance between the Caspian and the Black Sea.
Meanwhile, Iran for its part serves as a land bridge between the Caspian Sea on its north and the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman on its south, thereby providing access to the open seas for the land-locked countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
These are indeed vital links to facilitate trade and economize commercial exchanges in the interests of the collective development of not only littoral states, but they also promise economic bonanza for South and South East Asia as well as African countries without dependence on outside powers or disruption of these trade corridors by them.
When the required technology could be procured through regional states, there is no need to permit rank outsiders, especially any extra-territorial bully with a track record of state terrorism, and organized destruction of nations to infiltrate the region.
Thus, as emphasized by the Caspian Sea Convention, international saboteurs, including the world’s topmost terrorist state, the US, should be kept out of the world’s largest inland body of water, and this means American firms should not be given any contract for exploration of hydrocarbon reserves or laying of pipelines.