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Caspian states’ foreign ministers begin final meeting to prepare Aktau summit

Top diplomats of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan will prepare a draft communique of the August 12 summit

AKTAU /Kazakhstan/, August 11. /TASS/. The foreign ministers of the five Caspian states (Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan) have begun their meeting in Kazakhstan’s Aktau. A communique of the August 12 summit will be drafted at the meeting, a TASS correspondent reported.

Russia is represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Kazakhstan by the country’s top diplomat Kairat Abdrakhmanov, Turkmenistan by Deputy Cabinet Chairman and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov, Iran by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Azerbaijan - by Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier reported that the participants in the meeting plan to "agree on the modalities of further cooperation between the five Caspian states after signing the Convention [on the legal status of the Caspian Sea] and draft a communique of the upcoming summit."

On August 10, Aktau hosted a meeting of the Joint Working Group of the five Caspian states at the level of the deputy foreign ministers. Its participants summed up the results of work to prepare the summit documents, the most important of them being the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Six more agreements are expected to be signed at the summit, including on cooperation in the field of transport, trade and economy, the prevention of incidents in the Caspian Sea, along with three protocols to the agreement on security cooperation in the Caspian Sea, which are related to the fight against organized crime, terrorism and interaction between the Caspian states’ border guard services.

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