ITAR-TASS News Agency: Baku, Moscow to sign border, gas deals during a summit on Friday

ITAR-TASS News Agency

Friday, September 3, 2010

BAKU, September 3 (ITAR TASS) -- Azerbaijan and Russia will sign a border delimitation deal and will agree on bigger Azeri gas deliveries to Russia during a summit on Friday.

Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Dmitry Medvedev will also discuss the settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh, the status of the Caspian Sea, and military cooperation.

The border agreement with Russia will be the first for Azerbaijan. It will delimitate the border running between the two countries from Georgia to the Caspian Sea and will resolve the problem of water sharing from the Samur River which originates in Russia’s Dagestan, flows into the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan, and forms the border between the two countries. The Samur is the second largest river in Dagestan.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko said “Samur water will be shared on a parity basis - 50:50” and a joint commission will be set up to govern water distribution.

“The document is a backbone of further development of strategic partnership between Russia and Azerbaijan and contributes to the strengthening of security and stability in the Caucasus,” Prikhodko said.

The summit will also yield a deal on increased Azeri gas supplies to Russia in the coming two years, according to the aide. Azerbaijan began to supply its gas to Russia for the first time in 2010 and the volume was agreed at one billion cubic meters. However the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan and Russia’s Gazprom plan to double supplies and Azerbaijan is currently working to increase the capacity of the gas pumping station on the border with Russia.

Military-technical cooperation will be also discussed. A Kremlin official said the extended Russian lease of a military base in Armenia, with which Azerbaijan is in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, will highly be a major hurdle.

“We maintain full-fledged military-technical cooperation with Azerbaijan, therefore (the base) is not the main issue.The main thing is the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” the official said.

“We believe there is progress (in conflict settlement), which may not be always visible, but the situation is kept within political settlement and allows to gradually progress to normalization of bilateral relations,” he added.

Experts in Baku believe Gabala radar in Azerbaijan will also be discussed as the Russian lease of the facility expires in 2012.

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