Caspian States Ink Three Agreements
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Participants in the 4th summit of the Caspian Sea littoral countries signed three agreements on Monday.
The summit opened in the Russian city of Astrakhan on Monday with senior officials from the sea’s five littoral states in attendance.
The five nations signed three agreements in the fields of “protection and optimized exploitation of water resources”, “meteorology” and another one on the ways to “prevent and react to emergencies.”
All of the five countries’ presidents attended the summit, including Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkmenistan's Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev.
It was the fourth Caspian summit in some 12 years. The three previous meetings were held in Turkmenistan in 2002, Iran in 2007, and Azerbaijan in 2010.
The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed water body on earth by area, variously classed as the world’s largest lake or a full-fledged sea.
The Caspian Sea Convention will determine the territorial rights of littoral states as well as other matters related to the world’s largest landlocked body of water.
The current treaties on the Caspian's legal status date back to 1921 and 1940 when Iran and the Soviet Union negotiated the terms.