Full text of the speech of the Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian at the ministerial meeting of the Caspian Sea littoral states

The foreign ministerial summit of the littoral countries of the Caspian Sea provides a valuable opportunity for exchanging views over issues related to the sea as well as other regional and international topics and can pave the way for expansion of five-sided cooperation in the Caspian.

Your Excellency, Foreign Minister Reshid Meredov,
All honorable foreign ministers,

I would like to sincerely thank Turkmenistan for hosting the summits of foreign ministers and heads of the littoral Caspian Sea states and organizing the events superbly in the beautiful city of Ashgabat.
The foreign ministerial summit of the littoral countries of the Caspian Sea provides a valuable opportunity for exchanging views over issues related to the sea as well as other regional and international topics and can pave the way for expansion of five-sided cooperation in the Caspian.

Your Excellencies,
Four years have passed since the signing of the Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Although we have taken an important step in this regard, highly significant issues still remain unresolved, such as "the designation of maritime zones" and "the demarcation of basins and sub-basins." Following the inking of the Convention, the "High-Level Working Group on the Caspian Sea" was set up for studying different aspects of cooperation in the Caspian with the priority of drafting an agreement on the baselines.
Over the past four years, four meetings of the Working Group have convened and the negotiations are still ongoing. In addition, several summits have been held virtually for drafting and finalizing specialized five-sided documents, with the negotiations being underway. During this period, however, many great measures have been taken to advance five-sided cooperation on the Caspian-related issues despite the coronavirus pandemic. Still, we emphasize speeding up the finalization of the agreement on baselines to pave the way for benefiting from the advantages of the Convention. It is clear that deciding the baselines will work to operationalize the Convention.
We welcome the offer to hold the second "Economic Caspian Conference" in Russia, and we are of the opinion that the special attention of littoral states to the two fields of commerce and transit in the Caspian Sea, as the two arms actuating growth, development, prosperity, and advance for the littoral states of the sea should always be given special attention by the Caspian Sea littoral states. Also, the issue of protecting the environment and maritime life in the Caspian Sea should be put on the agenda of the Caspian Sea littoral states as a matter of high priority. Despite the decision made at the fifth summit of the parties to the Convention on the Protection of Maritime Life in the Caspian Sea in Ashgabat in 2014 about the establishment of the Tehran Conference's secretariat in the region, that decision has not been implemented yet, therefore, the right management of the Caspian Sea environmental protection and the establishment of the temporary secretariat of the "Tehran Convention" in the region is emphasized by us.

Honorable Participants,
The Islamic Republic of Iran has always laid emphasis on the mechanism for collective cooperation in the fields of protecting stability and security and expanding five-sided economic cooperation in the Caspian Sea. This issue is very important in terms of the security and national interests of all the littoral states of the Caspian. To that effect, we support five-sided cooperation mechanisms, including Russia's recent proposal for finalizing and establishing a system for cooperation in the Caspian, and believe that this initiative will systematize and enhance cooperation in the Caspian Sea.

Thank you for your attention.

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