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Kharrazi Urges Quick Decision on Caspian

ASHGABAT, Aug 13 (Reuters)- Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi urged five states surrounding the Caspian Sea to speed up work on determining its legal status because the unresolved issue blocked major energy projects.

``It is impossible to launch the construction of any oil and gas pipelines as long as the status remains unresolved,'' Kharrazi told a news conference after talks with Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov and other top officials.

``The statue of the Caspian Sea should be decided as soon as possible and this should be done in a fair way,'' he added.

The status of the Caspian Sea with estimated reserves of up to 15 billion tonnes of oil equivalent, has dogged coastal states of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran ever since the Soviet Union broke up at the end of 1991.

Until now, the status has determined by agreements signed by Iran and the Soviet Union in 1921 and 1940 on dividing the sea.

Russia, Iran and Turkey each favour competing plans for pipelines to pump out the Caspian region's oil and natural gas.

Kharazzi, who visited Azerbaijan on Wednesday, has said his trip was part of a campaign to win opportunities for Iran to participate in regional projects.

Russia and Iran traditionally take the view that the Caspian was a lake, not a sea, and so any resources should be the joint property of all the states surrounding it.

The Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan insist that the Caspian is a sea and should be carved up with national borders clearly dividing it.

Russia recently stepped back from its initial stance and now wants only the seabed to be divided, with the water and the surface remaining in common ownership. This would allow littoral states to have fishing rights and maintain a naval presence outside the national sectors of the seabed.

Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement marking out their border in the northern Caspian on this basis last month.

Iran rejected the deal between Russia and Kazakhstan saying no agreement could be considered valid unless all five littoral states agreed it.

In Ashgabat, Kharrazi insisted that the decision on the status of the Caspian Sea should be unanimous but indicated that Iran was ready to agree to some kind of division.

``Even if all five states decide that the Caspian should be divided into national sectors, we deeply believe that the parties should accept some joint principles of using the sea bed and surface of the sea,'' he said.

A Turkmen Foreign Ministry spokesman said Kharrazi and Niyazov ageed to set up a bilateral expert group to debate the issue.

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