Results of the 32nd Meeting of the Working Group on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea

 Russian Foreign Ministry  has published information on its site on the results of 32nd meetings in Tehran on April 23-24, of the Special Working Group on the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea  with participation of Deputy Foreign Ministers of the Caspian states.

The report said that the meeting was attended by delegations of Azerbaijan (led by  Khalafov), Iran (Akhundzade), Kazakhstan (Amanzholov), Russia (Bratchikov), and Turkmenistan (Atadjanov.)

Iranian Foreign Minister, Salehi, who opened the meeting,  praised the work of the  Special Working Group, and stressed the need to accelerate the development of the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, establishing general principles of the sea, and the rights and obligations of coastal States concerning the Caspian Sea.

During the meeting, which was held in a friendly and constructive atmosphere, the heads of delegations presented their countries' positions on key elements of the legal status of the Caspian Sea and the various aspects of cooperation in the sea. According to some provisions of the draft Convention, the parties have made new proposals and compromise formulas. The importance of the early decisions the Third Caspian Summit (Baku, 2010) was noted.

In particular, mutual understanding was reached on the need to present all the parties at the next meeting of the Working Group mapping schemes with the application of their baselines to their substantive discussion.

Delegations stressed the need to maintain the pace of negotiations in order to enhance coordination of the draft Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea.

The 33rd regular session of the Special Working Group will be held in Baku. The sides agreed to set a date for the meeting through diplomatic channels within  a month.-02D-