The prospects of signing a convention on the Caspian Sea legal regime after years of haggling seem bleak due to a variety of reasons that could give rise to tensions in the region, according to an article published by a news agency in Tehran.
Heads of the five Caspian littoral states—Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—are scheduled to meet in the Kazakh city of Aktau on August 16, in which a deal is expected to be finalized, Tasnim News Agency reported Monday.
Although they appear to have finally settled their differences and agree on delineating their maritime borders, the process of finalizing an agreement could drag on for a number of reasons, including the fact that it could pave the way for the export of Turkmenistan gas to Europe, the article said.
Economic Interests
"Russia and Iran, which both have large gas reserves, do not want to see a new competitor in the European market," Tansim said in the commentary, citing the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
The building of a new pipeline to move Turkmen gas across the Caspian to Azerbaijan and possibly to Europe could endanger Iranian and Russian economic interests, it added.
However, the paper concurs that Tehran and Moscow cannot block the implementation of the project "forever".
According to Eurasianet, proposals for a pipeline to carry Turkmen gas to Europe are not new. Such plans first surfaced in the late 1990s, when the European Union first floated the idea of opening a "Southern Gas Corridor" as a means to curb Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.
Tasnim quoted the Russian newspaper Pravda as saying that Iran and Russia are unlikely to make any concessions on this critical issue.
New Developments
According to the paper, another hindrance is the fact that Kazakhstan recently agreed to allow Washington to use its Caspian ports of Aktau and Kuryk as transit points for shipping non-military material to Afghanistan.
On the other hand, Moscow has announced that it is shifting the home base of its Caspian Flotilla from Astrakhan, at the northern edge of the sea, to Kaspiysk, Dagestan, some 400km away, toward the central section of the sea, the article said.
"Such issues have not been publicly talked about by diplomats from the five Caspian Sea states but are being actively discussed behind closed doors," Tansim wrote, citing Pravda.
Despite the apparent calm in the Caspian Sea, the region is slowly but steadily turning into a new scene of confrontation between Russia and the United States, the news agency said.
