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President Vladimir Putin and President Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan adopted a joint statement on the principles of Caspian cooperation and a Baku declaration on the principles of security and cooperation in the Caucasus.

The Statement said Azerbaijan and Russia were ready to promote five-sided negotiations for a convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. The document stressed that the Caspian must primarily be a sea of peace and friendship and that questions related to the Caspian should be resolved by peaceful means.

Mr Putin and Mr Aliyev also said that giving a new legal status to the Caspian Sea was the business of the Caspian nations themselves. The document noted that Russia and Azerbaijan wanted to make the Special Task Force of Caspian Deputy Foreign Ministers a regularly functioning body.

The two countries stated their belief that at a time when the Caspian nations had widely diverging positions on a new legal status for the Caspian, a consensus on its solution should be sought in stages. At the first stage it was proposed to delimit the Caspian seabed between neighbouring and opposite nations into sectors/zones by the medium line method providing the points were equally distant and the method had been modified as agreed by the sides, and also in accordance with the generally recognised principles of international law and accepted practices on the Caspian.

Azerbaijan and Russia also agreed that each of the coastal nations should have its exclusive rights to mineral resources and other rightful economic activities on the bed recognised in a sector/zone formed as a result of such delimitation.

Russia and Azerbaijan, the Statement stressed, considered that a top-level meeting of five littoral countries would meet cooperation interests in the Caspian and regulate the status of the Caspian Sea.

The Declaration expressed serious concern over the spread of terrorism, extremism and aggressive separatism in the Caucasus, which posed a threat to the region’s peaceful future. In view of this Russia and Azerbaijan agreed to continue cooperation between their foreign policy, security and law enforcement agencies.

The document emphasised the sides’ readiness to develop military and military-technology cooperation on a long-term basis, which, they said, met the security interests of both countries and was not directed against any third states, nor contradicted the international commitments of Russia and Azerbaijan.

The following inter-governmental agreements were signed in the presence of Mr Putin and Mr Aliyev: on international automobile traffic; on the status of media correspondents in Russia and Azerbaijan; on cooperation in preventing emergency situations; on mutual assistance in tax legislation; and on cooperation in government communications.

The heads of Russian oil company LUKoil and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan signed an agreement on exploration rehabilitation, development and sharing of output in the Zykh-Govsany oil fields in Azerbaijan.

The Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information of Russia and the Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan concluded an inter-departmental agreement on cooperation in information security.