Speech by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the session of the Special work group to develop the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, Moscow, 21 November 2013

Colleagues,

I welcome the delegations from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Moscow for the session of the Special work group to develop the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea and wish its participants fruitful work.

The Caspian agenda is becoming more and more substantial. It is evident that this region is an area of vital interest for all of us. The welfare of millions of nationals of our countries, who are involved in various economicareas, including energy, transport, agriculture, shipbuilding and fishing, will depend on the way the situation in the Caspian develops. Taking into account the important role of the Caspian Sea in sustainable development of our countries, the five countries must have an especially responsible attitude to the tasks of joint effective management of this unique body of water and its conservation for future generations.

More than two years have passed since we last gathered in Moscow – in June 2011. It is good that this period has not been lost time and has been characterised by the high intensity of the negotiation process.

In our estimation, the work on the project of the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea – a founding document, which should form a secure mechanism of enforcement of sovereign rights in the Caspian – is proceeding well.

In 2011-2012, important international legal documents for the protection of the marine environment of the Caspian, such as the Protocol Concerning Regional Preparedness, Response and Cooperation in Combating Oil Pollution Incidents, the Protocol for the Protection of the Caspian Sea against Pollution from Land-based Sources and Activities, were signed in pentalateral format. The development of new protocols to the Tehran Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea is in its final stage. The work on cooperation agreements in areas like hydrometeorology, conservation and sustainable use of the biological resources of the Caspian Sea, prevention and management of emergencies, is also coming to its end.

The process of ratification of the 2010 Agreement on Security Cooperation in the Caspian Sea, which opens up good opportunities for more effective and agreed fightingby the littoral states of challenges and threats, which are topical for us, is in its final stage. We think that, when we complete the ratification process, at the same time, it will be time to deal with the development of protocols, which would particularise different lines of cooperation under this Agreement.

I note with satisfaction that all the discussions in these directions are constructive, in the spirit of equality and mutual respect. We manage to bring our positions togetherunder a common denominator.

We are convinced that the work on the implementation of the decisions, which were adopted by the heads of the five Caspian states at the summit in Baku in 2010, allows us to start preparing for the next, fourth Caspian summit, which is scheduled for the second half of next year in Astrakhan. Leaders of our states have analysed the implementation of the agreements reached earlier,from all angles, to approve the priorities of the work for the purposes of enforcement of future regional stability and cooperation.

The Russian party proposes to start preparing for the forthcoming meeting at summit level, including the final documents,as from today. From our point of view, we should formalise our established understanding of several key issues in them – including those reached in the course of our work on the text of the draft Convention on the legal status of the sea.

We believe that there is no need to change the established order or invent any new structures. In more than 20 years since the emergence of new independent states in the Caspian, a certain code of conduct based on mutual trust and consideration of each other's interests has been established between the five states. We propose to formalise these particular rules in the summit's final document.

In today's conditions, it is extremely important to conserve the Caspian region as an area of peace, friendship and neighbourly relations. Russia intends to strictly adhere to the available agreements about the resolution of all principled Caspian issues within the framework of only the five countries which have exclusive rights in respect to the sea and its resources. We think that those non-constructive attempts of individual states and organisations, which are located far from the Caspian Sea, to impose their interests, their line of conduct on the Caspian states, and sometimes to attempt to strike us all together, do not help. Any military presence of some out-of-region countries in the Caspian is absolutely inadmissible. We do not face any problems here, our presidents have expressed such an understanding many times.

Colleagues,

The decision of the Baku summit formalised a single approach to the settlement of the issue of delimitation of the waters of the Caspian Sea, and the Special work group will discuss methods of implementation of such an approach at its session today. Of course, we need to take into account basic and time- and experience-proven provisions of international law, including in respect to the regime of free navigation for littoral states, which is in force in this body of water. One of our primary tasks is to conserve the biological diversity of the Caspian Sea, primarily, its unique population of sturgeons. We support the efforts to create an efficient pentalateral mechanism of regulation and control in the fishing area with authorisations to place temporary bans on commercial fishing of valuable fish. We expect that the respective document will be signed at the summit in Astrakhan. In this context, we welcome the fact that this year all the countries have declared a moratorium on sturgeon fishing and we appeal for it to be extended to next year.

In our opinion, it is desirable to hold meetings between specialists to discuss the agreement on biological resources each month in the forthcoming period. We propose to devote the December session of the Commission on Aquatic Bioresources of the Caspian Sea to the work on this agreement.

In our estimation, we will be able to coordinate the agenda of the Astrakhan summit and the content of its final documents in the coming months. The interim results of this work may be summarised at the next Conference of foreign ministers of the Caspian states, which we will be glad to welcome next spring in Moscow.

On this occasion, I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to the foreign ministers of your countries, who responded positively to my recent messages to them regarding the issues, which we propose to consider in the near future, and the proposition to hold a ministerial conference of Caspian states in Moscow.

To end, I would like to wish you the same fruitful and sincere work, which we observed at our previous meetings, and to express a hope that your meeting today will conclude with specific results.