The leaders of the Caspian Sea states gathered Tuesday for a summit in Tehran to discuss interpolitical relations and issues. The summit consists of the five nations bordering the inland sea: Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. This is the second summit of the Caspian Sea Littoral States.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev arrived on Monday morning and was officially welcomed by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
The two presidents also held talks on bilateral ties as well as important regional and international issues.
Ahmadinejad said it is projected that Iran-Kazakhstan trade will hit $10 billion a year in the near future. The Iranian president added that the two countries are determined to expand their economic relations. Iran-Kazakhstan trade currently stands at $2 billion a year.
One of the topics of the summit was the division of the region's substantial energy resources. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since the Second World War, warned that projects of energy pipelines crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations support them.
Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow's strong opposition to US-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver Central Asian and Caspian hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.
Putin also emphasized the need for all Caspian nations to prohibit the use of their territory by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region - a clear reference to long-standing rumours that the US might be planning to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran.
Ahmadinejad also underlined the need to keep outsiders away from the Caspian.
The legal status of the Caspian, believed to contain the world's third-largest energy reserves, has been in limbo since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits.
Iran, which shared the Caspian's resources equally with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation's shoreline, which would give Iran a smaller share. Turkmenistan is also vying for the Caspian's resources.
Putin's visit took place despite warnings of amid hopes that a round of personal diplomacy could help offer a solution to an international stand-off on Iran's nuclear programme.
The Russian leader's trip was thrown into doubt when the Kremlin said on Sunday that he had been informed by Russian special services that suicide attackers might try to kill him in Tehran, but he shrugged off the warning.
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