IRAN LOOKS WITH JAUNDICED EYE AT AZERBAIJAN’S LATEST OIL CONTRACTS.

Iran’s embassy in Baku issued a statement yesterday–one first aired on May 1 by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran–sharply challenging the legal validity of the multibillion oil contracts just signed by Azerbaijan with the Exxon and Mobil companies of the United States (see the Monitor, April 29). Tehran’s challenge is two-pronged. It maintains, first, that the contracts are “null and void” in view of the “indivisibility” of the Caspian Sea–a situation which in Tehran’s view necessitates the consent of all five littoral countries to any offshore project by any one country. That familiar–and generally disregarded–Iranian thesis is accompanied by its counterpoint. The statement claims that in the event of an agreement among littoral countries to divide the sea into national sectors, the oilfields in the Exxon and Mobil contracts would be situated partly in the Iranian sector. Tehran accordingly “warns” Azerbaijan and the oil companies against going ahead with these projects before the legal issues will have been resolved. Meanwhile, any work performed in the area claimed by Iran would amount to “violating Iran’s legitimate rights” (IRNA, Tehran Times, Azer-Press, May 2-5).

Last December, Iran awarded a concession in this part of the Caspian Sea to a tandem of the Royal-Dutch Shell company and the LASMO company of Britain, under an agreement with the National Iranian Oil Company. That area overlapped with Azerbaijan’s sector. Baku protested and succeeded in stopping that project. Part of that area is now included in Baku’s contracts with Mobil and Exxon. Those two companies plan to merge this year, forming the world’s largest oil company. Iran’s “warnings” are likely to prove as ineffective in this case as they proved when Tehran tried to stop the other Western oil projects in Azerbaijan’s Caspian sector.

KYRGYZ GOVERNMENT SAYS IT HAS UNCOVERED AN ANTIPRESIDENTIAL TERRORIST PLOT.