Baku Says Hands Off Caspian Oil

Azeri President Haydar Aliyev said Russia was not blocking his country's plans to develop Caspian Sea oil deposits with foreign companies. "Azeri oilmen have been extracting oil from the Caspian basin since 1949 ... No one, no force, no country can deprive us ... of this right," he said at a meeting in Baku on Tuesday with British ambassador Thomas Young. Aliyev, in remarks broadcast by Azeri television, said a Russian statement demanding that Moscow be consulted on Caspian Sea development projects was irrelevant to a multibillion-dollar offshore project with a foreign oil consortium."No attention should be given to such insignificant information," he said. Aliyev's remarks were monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigory Karasin said last week that resource development in the Caspian was the responsibility of all five states bordering the inland water -- Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iran. He said the legal status of the landlocked Caspian had not yet been established. "Our position is that the Caspian Sea should not be divided into sectors. By nature, the Caspian Sea is an enclosed water reservoir with a single eco-system and all its natural resources should be developed in common," Karasin said. "This means that all questions related to the use of natural resources should be settled by all the Caspian states."