Caspian Sea is the sea of friendship and peace: Nazarbayev

At the 4th Caspian Summit in Russian Astrakhan the Caspian Five made a whole range of milestone decisions and found agreement on many complex issues of international cooperation and have become a step closure to reaching an agreement on the issue that has staying high on the agenda for nearly 20 years - the status of the Caspian Sea, Tengrinews reports.  

Presidents of all five Caspian Sea coastal nations: Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Hassan Rouhani of Iran, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan gathered on September 29 in Russian Astrakhan.

Summarizing the results of the summit President Nazarbayev said: "The results of the Astrakhan summit, I am sure, will give a whole new impetus to continue moving [towards adoption of] the main document - the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.

"Moreover, important are the documents we signed in front of you: we have resolved the issue of security, which we will ensure on our own without calling on third parties, and the issue of biosafety of Caspian reserves. We will peacefully resolve the issues relating to extraction and processing of energy resources. We decided to create a highway and railway belt around the Caspian Sea that will connect the Caspian nations to all the other routes. This is but a small portion of what we have discussed. The speeches of the President of Russia and my other colleagues give you full information of what we have been talking about.

"Apart from that, I would like to add that we all welcomed the idea presented by Turkmenistan to create a permanent Caspian Economic Forum. I suggested creating a Free Trade Zone. Possibly, in the future, a special organization will be created to overlook the implementation of the decisions.

"Thanks to the hospitality of the Russian side, the residents of Astrakhan city, we have had the talks that are very important for all our countries. And the results are obvious. I would like to congratulate us all on the results. We will be leave with a feeling the place with a new certainty that the Caspian Sea is a sea of peace, friendship, the sea that will serve all the Caspian nations."

By Dinara Urazova and Tatyana Kuzmina