AKTAU, August 12. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the Convention on Caspian Sea’s Legal Status as a good example of successful teamwork in difficult global conditions of the present day.
"Success that has been achieved, and this is certainly success, has become possible to a great extent due to a high level of trust and mutual understanding between the leaders of the Caspian states, their readiness to always act within the logic of respect, partnership and equality," the Russian president said.
"I would like to express gratitude for this to all heads of state present here. This collective approach has demonstrated its efficiency and importance, has demonstrated that ambitious goals in all, even most complicated issues, can be achieved through joint efforts, that compromises and balanced decisions meeting common interests can be found," the president said.
"It is important that the convention clearly regulates issues of navigation and fisheries, commits to paper the principles of military political cooperation between the member nations, guarantees the use of the Caspian Sea purely in peaceful purposes and non-presence of armed forces of off-region states," Putin said.
He said he shares the opinion of his counterparts that the 5th Caspian summit "has an extraordinary, if not, landmark, significance." He stressed that the convention on the Caspian Sea’s legal status that had been prepared for more than 20 years commits to paper the exclusive right and responsibility of states for the sea’s future and sets clear rules of its collective use. The Russian leader thanked all those who took part in the work on the document.
"A balanced international agreement has been elaborated on the basis of consensus and mutual reckoning with each other’s interests. The agreement will supersede the Soviet-Iranian agreements of 1921 and 1940," Putin added.
At the fifth Caspian summit on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Iran Hasan Rouhani, President of Azerbaijan Ilkham Aliyev and President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov inked the document determining the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Work on the document had continued since 1996, while its draft was agreed by the five nations’ foreign ministers on December 4-5, 2017 in Moscow.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier that the very fact of passing the convention would be a major breakthrough. He said the Caspian quintet would get a "reliable legal foundation giving a possibility to achieve a higher level of cooperation".