Kazakhstan plans to work out a joint position with Russia on jurisdiction over the Caspian Sea and it expects the other three Caspian states to accept it, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Monday.


"I am convinced that if Russia and Kazakhstan work out a common position, and we have agreed to do this, the others will adhere to it," Nazarbayev told a news conference, following talks last week with President Boris Yeltsin.


Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, as well as Russia and Kazakhstan, have coasts on the Caspian.


Last September, Russia objected to a $7.4 billion oil deal between Azerbaijan and a consortium of foreign companies to develop three Caspian oil fields, saying the sea's resources were the joint property of all littoral states.


"Russia and Kazakhstan will soon work out a common position and submit it to the other three," Nazarbayev said, adding that the issue had been raised at the talks with Yeltsin and Russian government officials.


He said the Kazakh section of the northern and eastern part of the Caspian shelf had huge reserves of oil and gas.


Nazarbayev said jurisdiction over the Caspian depended on whether the landlocked water was classified as a sea or a lake. But whatever the decision, he said, Kazakhstan's planned offshore developments were not in dispute.


Nazarbayev also said he had discussed with Yeltsin a new oil-export pipeline project from western Kazakhstan to Russia's Black Sea coast.


He said the $1.2 billion pipeline would have an initial capacity of 12 million tons a year under the first phase of construction, due to start late this year.