Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug. 31 / Trend , U.Ismayilova/
The primary purpose of Turkmenistan's own naval base on the Caspian Sea is to protect the oil and gas wells, rather than to accelerate resolving the status of the sea, ex-Head of the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers Economic and Financial-credit Policy, Oqtay Hagverdiyev said.
"The issue of solving the status of the Caspian Sea will be discussed for a long time," said Hagverdiev on Aug. 31.
He said that resolving the status of the Caspian Sea depends on all the littoral states, the parties must reach a unanimous agreement - "either to divide the bottom, or bottom and the sea."
Turkmenistan will quickly create a military-naval base of the Defense Ministry and border guards at the Caspian Sea, the Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said at the enlarged meeting of the State Security Council on August 30, RIA Novosti reported.
Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov instructed the heads of military and law enforcement ministries and departments "to effectively combat the smugglers, terrorists, and any other forces which will attempt to violate the state maritime border of Turkmenistan, or to create an unstable situation there."
Turkmenistan has not yet defined the borders on the Caspian Sea with other states. On dividing the bottom of the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia have no claims on one another's. There are both bilateral and trilateral agreements between these countries on the issue. The parties have also agreed to determine the coordinates of the dividing line. The issue is yet to be agreed with just two countries - Turkmenistan and Iran - due to which the status of the Caspian Sea has not yet been defined, despite many years of discussions.
Azerbaijan was the first the Caspian Sea country to begin to set the limits of the world's largest lake and define the limits of control over it. First, the Republic of Azerbaijan announced the accessibility of its sector of the Caspian Sea, fixing this on Sept. 20 in 1994 by signing an international contract ("The Contract of the Century") with Western companies on a PSA model - production sharing agreement. This has also been reflected in the Basic Law of Azerbaijan, dated 1995.
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