Bilateral and three lateral agreements will not be effective until the five-sided agreement is signed

Caspian Energy (CE): To what extent are you satisfied with the results of the 44th session of the special working group on the convention of legal status of the Caspian Sea in Baku? 

Ebrahim Rahimpour, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Special Representative for the Caspian Sea Affairs: Conduction of the 44th session of the special working group for the Caspian Sea in Baku means that five Caspian states have been holding negotiations on this issue for more than 20 years. However, our sessions held over the past 2-3 years became more frequent along with the breakthrough reached in these meetings. Four summits of heads of the Caspian States have been held in 4 Caspian countries. The fifth one is scheduled to be arranged in near future. 

The summits took place in Ashgabat, then in Tehran, Baku and Astrakhan right in accordance with the clock hand. Astana will host the following 5th summit. It is hoped that we will complete the work on the convention of the legal status of the Caspian Sea while holding the 5th summit. 

It is a big dream and we think of the way to get this dream come true in order to hold the 5th summit of the heads of Caspian states in 2016. All parties are interested in solution of this issue. But the closer we get to the finish we run into the problems which are more complicated to solve than we supposed. While holding nuclear negotiations 5+1 we followed the “mutual benefit” principle which helped us to gain success. Taking into account that present negotiations involve 5 states of our region, we find the conditions more convenient and think that we will be able to overcome all obstacles. 

But, be that as it may, at the 44th session of the special group held in Baku we discussed the remained issues concerning the convention of the legal status of the Caspian Sea. In spite of the fact that the Republic of Azerbaijan faced a problem on the western border at that moment, the official Baku arranged a very good reception and we successfully continued our negotiations. 

Fortunately, the Caspian Sea let the Caspian states live in peace, friendship and accord without the signing of the Convention. Fortunately, all 5 Caspian states have a big energy potential and are not dependent on the Caspian Sea resources in terms of energy. Besides, all five Caspian states have a high energy potential in the global scale. Therefore, all five states can perfectly conduct energy cooperation both in the Caspian and within their own territories as well as represent their energy interests in the international arena. The energy potential of the Caspian states lets ensure the needs of our regions for 100 years to come. Many of those countries, which possess a big energy potential now, will not have it in 100 years. Therefore, we can cooperate in this area in the long-term. I can say that the future belongs to our region and many countries will be in need of cooperation with our states. In this regard, we should think more and take care of our future generations.