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Operation Active Endeavour for the Caspian Sea

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MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin.)

The Volga delta city of Astrakhan recently hosted an international conference on establishing the Caspian Sea naval cooperation task force (CASFOR) to be made up of warships from Caspian littoral states. Russia pushed the task force as the most effective way to counter threats in the area, primarily terrorism.

The conference was organized by General of the Army Yuri Baluyevsky, head of the Russian General Staff, and Fleet Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, and was chaired by the Russian Caspian Flotilla commander, Vice-Admiral Yuri Startsev.

During the conference, President Vladimir Putin was also in Astrakhan, on a familiarization tour of the border-guard units in the region. There were no official reports of him attending the conference or sending his greetings, but it is clear that such events are not held without the Kremlin's agreement and support.

Interestingly, all Caspian littoral states, including Turkmenistan and Iran, participated in the conference, despite current disagreements, in particular on where borders in the sea should run. What made them pool their efforts? The terrorist threat? No doubt. A drive to protect their economic exclusion zones, rich in fish and energy resources? Certainly. However, what matters the most - and it is clear to any unbiased observer - is the wish to preempt the United States and NATO and keep them out of the land-locked Caspian Sea, into which they are desperately trying to get under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Warships of NATO countries and NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) partners patrol the Mediterranean on a permanent basis. Suspicious ships are stopped and searched as part of Operation Active Endeavor, checked for illegal migrants, dangerous cargo and terrorists and escorted to their destinations. Similar operations are also planned for the Black Sea, which is fervently opposed by Moscow. If Washington and Brussels also show up on the maritime borders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan under the pretext of "maintaining freedom of navigation and security on busy trade routes in the vicinity of the Caspian area," the sovereignty of the Caspian littoral states will be somewhat limited. This will not benefit anyone, least of all Iran, whose relations with Washington remain hostile.

There is no doubt that the United States and NATO are beefing up their military presence in the region. Cases in point are the hundreds of U.S. instructors training the Georgian Army, the U.S. commandos who came to Azerbaijan to guard and defend the Baku-Tbilisi-Batumi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and NATO's proactive mediation to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and dispatch NATO troops there as peacekeepers.

However, there are several minor but key obstacles to conducting an Active Endeavor in the Caspian, of which the main one is the legal status of CASFOR, which should exist under the auspices of a common political organization. There is no such organization in the Caspian area. Russia and Kazakhstan are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Neither organization, however, includes Iran or Azerbaijan, though Iran has been granted observer status at the SCO. Turkmenistan is a member of no organization and, under its constitution, is a neutral state. Clearing these legal hurdles would be difficult. In addition, the Caspian states would have to obtain approval from the United Nations for an operation similar to Active Endeavor.

There are other difficulties as well, including working out the status of the operation, and establishing the chain of subordination to its command and the legal procedures necessary for boarding parties to search suspicious ships. For example, NATO men are not entitled to board foreign ships without their captains' approval, and nor do they chase non-compliant ships, as Russian border guards do when they go after poachers. They just alert the Mediterranean states' authorities, who order local police cooperating with NATO meet recalcitrant ships in ports of destination. What will be the modus operandi in the Caspian, where ships can disappear into cane-covered marshes instead of proceeding to their destinations? The question has to be considered thoroughly, which was one aim of the conference.

Still, the problems above seem minor compared with the principal one: Turning the Caspian into a sea of peace and harmony, a zone free of the terrorist threat, and having the Caspian states do that themselves.

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