Putin Due in Iran Next Week

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to pay a visit to Tehran next Monday to attend a summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states. Speaking to FNA here on Tuesday, a diplomat from the Russian embassy in Tehran confirmed the visit but refrained to reveal the details of the trip.

Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitriy Peskov had earlier said that the Russian president would pay a visit to Tehran to attend the summit.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had also said that he had extended a relevant invitation to his Russian counterpart during a meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the Kyrgyz capital city of Bishkek last week.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Sunday that the presidents and foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral states – Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – are scheduled to arrive here in Tehran to attend the summit on October 16.

“A discussion of the legal regime of the Caspian Sea and multilateral cooperation among the littoral states as well as a review of the regional and international issues are among the main agenda of the meeting,” Hosseini told reporters during his weekly press conference.

“Participant heads of states are expected to give out a final statement at the end of the summit,” he added.

Foreign ministers of the Caspian Sea littoral states in a meeting in Tehran on June 20 prepared a draft statement for the upcoming summit.

The foreign ministers also said they were confident that the upcoming summit would give rise to a fresh movement for developing relations and boosting multilateral cooperation among the said states.

In their meeting, the foreign ministers of the littoral states also studied a draft convention prepared by their deputies on the Caspian Sea legal regime, and reiterated that the talks – which they described as “positive” – should continue.

The ministers also said they were satisfied to see that the convention on the framework of the Caspian Sea Environmental Protection (Tehran Convention) has been put into effect, and called for the rapid compilation of complementary protocols.