Russia deplores EU CDT gas pipeline

The Russian Foreign Ministry deplores the decision of the European Union''s Council to endorse the mandate of the European Commission for the trilateral talks of EU-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan to sign a legally-binding agreement to implement the Transcaspian gas pipeline project, Alexander Lukashevich, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a briefing on Tuesday. "By all indications, it was made without considering the existing situation in the sphere of international law and geopolitical situation in the Caspian basin," he was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying. Lukashevich stressed that the five Caspian Sea states had agreed that all fundamental questions of the activity in the Caspian should be decided only by the littoral countries themselves. "This principle was registered in the politically-binding Declaration the heads of the Caspian states signed on October 16, 2007 after the Second Caspian Summit in Tehran," Lukashevich said. "This principle was confirmed by the Joint Statement of presidents following the Third Caspian Summit in Baku on November 18, 2010," he said. "It is apparent that the plans of laying out a mainline Transcaspian pipeline in the land-locked body of water with high seismic activity and high tectonic activity of the bed is precisely such a question," Lukashevich noted. "The construction and operation of the Trancaspian gas pipeline, and, moreover, any accident involving it may affect all the littoral states, not only those whose coasts it will link." The spokesman stressed that "such a pipeline, a structure absolutely novel for quality, scale and potential risks, is incompatible with technological pipelines for extraction of mineral resources on the seabed and delivery from the deposits to the coast now existing in the Caspian." "As far as we know, this is a first such experience for the European Union, and it is amazing that it is to be tried precisely in the Caspian, as not a single state of the European Union reaches the Caspian coast," Lukashevich said. "The system of arrangements and mechanisms of interaction the Caspian states worked out over many years now operates in the Caspian," he added. "The attempts at outside interference into the Caspian affairs, moreover, on matters sensitive for members of the Caspian Five, can complicate considerably the situation in the area and have a negative effect on the five-sided tasks on the new legal status of the Caspian under way now," he said. "We hope that the Council of the European Union will give due attention to the stand of Russia and other countries of the Caspian Five and will refrain from actions not coordinated in the appropriate format," the spokesman stressed.