Expert: Determination of Caspian Sea's status unlikely to be resolved soon

Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 18 / Trend /

The issue of determining the status of the Caspian Sea is unlikely to be resolved soon, an expert at the London-based Chatham House said in an interview Deutsche Welle this week.

Baku will host the summit of the Caspian littoral countries, including Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan on Nov. 18.

The main issue to be addressed at the summit is the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have resolved the issue. However, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iran have not been able to agree on the boundary between their respective sectors of the sea.

Yury Fedorov said maritime delimitation is a fundamental and very complex problem.

"It is impossible to solve this problem soon because Iran claims 20 percent of the total area of the sea, which is not acceptable for either Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan, or for other Caspian countries," he said.

However, he added that the summit could result in the signing of a document on the non-use of force between Caspian countries.

"If Azerbaijan begins to study some oil and gas fields in a part of the Caspian Sea that Iran considers as its own, then Iran will not be able to use force as it did several years ago," he said.

The unsolved issue of delimitating the Caspian Sea between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan is also an important obstacle in the implementation of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, Fedorov said.

"These problems are not solved quickly," he concluded. "I do not think they will be solved in the near future."