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Baku supports the establishment of the Caspian Economic Cooperation Organization regarding its task to define the sea's legal status.
"If this initiative envisages a much closer cooperation between the Caspian states, Azerbaijan does not oppose its implementation. If an idea is put forward to establish economic cooperation, in the first place, the legal status of the Caspian Sea should be determined - only after that can one think about the process of creating such an economic organization," Head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration International Relations Department, Novruz Mammadov, told Trend News on Aug. 24.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently made the proposal to establish the Caspian Economic Cooperation Organization.
One of the main areas of Azerbaijani foreign policy is close cooperation with all littoral states. Azerbaijan would like to cooperate more closely both with the Caspian states, and with all the countries of Central Asia," Mammadov said.
On defining the sea's legal status, certain steps have been already taken and it is necessary to continue and resolve the issue of the Caspian Sea's division among countries, he said.
"Azerbaijan has already reached an agreement on the Caspian with Russia and Kazakhstan, while there are still problems with Iran and Turkmenistan on this issue," Mammadov said. "The negotiations with them continue; there is no total agreement with these countries yet, but I think sooner or later we will achieve that."
The parties need to find a common position, he believes.
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.
/trend.az/
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