Putin for balanced solution to Caspian legal dispute (Roundup)

Tehran, Oct 16 - Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a 'balanced' solution to the question of sharing the Caspian Sea as five littoral states in a joint statement Tuesday here said the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is key to international stability and security.

'We have to try to find a balanced solution acceptable to all sides and make the best of the status quo of the Caspian Sea even before reaching a legal status,' DPA quoted Putin as saying at the summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states here.

Putin arrived in the Iranian capital on a two-day official visit ignoring a warning by Russian intelligence of an assassination plot against him.

The status of the Caspian Sea has long been under discussion among the five nations - Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

'We have to build confidence to settle the relevant issues and not even think of referring to force against each other in the Caspian Sea, or allow other countries to avail themselves of our (Caspian) territories,' the Russian president added.

'A joint understanding and use of the Caspian Sea and its oil, gas and biological resources regardless of national boundaries will be to the benefit of all littoral states,' he told the summit.

The summit - held at the Sadabad Palace, a former residence of an Iranian shah, in northern Tehran - is another effort to find a legal status for the Caspian Sea since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The first summit in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in 2002 addressed the legal rights of Caspian nations to explore the huge oil reserves beneath the world's largest saline lake.

The participants issued a joint statement underlining that the NPT is a key to international stability and security.

Quoting the text of the statement, Russian news agency RIA Novosti said the five countries confirmed 'the unassailable right of all signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to research, produce and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, without discrimination and within the statutes of this treaty and the safeguards of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).'

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his speech, called on Caspian Sea littoral states to cooperate in achieving regional and global peace.

'The cooperation of our five countries will not only benefit our own region but also global peace,' Ahmadinejad told the opening ceremony and stressed the need to find a suitable framework to continue peaceful co-existence from which all sides would benefit.

Putin, who is the first Moscow leader to visit Iran since Josef Stalin in 1943, is also expected to discuss Iran's nuclear programmes with Ahmadinejad during his stay in Iran.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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