Iran's President Khatami Due In Neighbouring Azerbaijan

BAKU, Aug 4 (AFP) - Iran's President Mohammad Khatami was due Thursday to make his first official visit to neighbouring Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic caught in the middle of a tussle between Tehran and Washington for influence in the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
Disputed territorial rights in the inland sea -- and Iranian unease over the growing US military presence in Azerbaijan -- will figure on the agenda when Khatami arrives in the Azeri capital, Baku, for a two-day visit, according to analysts.
In a mark of the frosty relations between the two neighbours, Khatami's trip to Azerbaijan will be the first by an Iranian leader since his predecessor, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, visited in 1993.
Officials have said Khatami and Azerbaijan's pro-western President Ilham Aliyev will sign a raft of bilateral agreements to bolster economic and cultural cooperation, as well as discuss security issues.
"Iran attaches great importance to a powerful Azerbaijan which safeguards national and regional interests in this sensitive and strategic region," Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said at the weekend.
"Tehran... considers our common borders as borders of friendship and peace," the minister was quoted as saying by Iran's IRNA news agency.
Azerbaijan and Iran, along with the other states with Caspian shorelines Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, have for years been at loggerheads over how to divide up the landlocked sea between them.
The row nearly spilled over into armed conflict in 2001, when an Iranian warship fired a warning shot at an Azeri research vessel, which had been chartered by multinational BP to prospect for oil in disputed waters.
But the stakes in the dispute have been raised because the United States -- viewed in Iran as "the Great Satan" -- is backing Azerbaijan's efforts to get Caspian Sea oil to world markets.
The sea is estimated to hold energy reserves bigger than those in the United States and the North Sea and is seen as a useful alternative to Middle East oil.
The Pentagon, saying it wants to help protect Azerbaijan's oil infrastructure, has provided Azerbaijan with coast guard cutters and run joint training operations with the Azeri navy in the Caspian Sea.
This year, top brass in the US military have also said they hoped to start a large-scale training programme for the Azeri military and have floated the idea of using military facilities in Azerbaijan as temporary bases for US forces deploying in the region.
However, Iran, designated by US President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil," fears the US military presence on its northern border is part of a US plot against it, say analysts.
"(Tehran) wants to limit the foreign military presence in certain areas and I think the discussions between President Khatami and Ilham Aliyev will be along those lines," said Rassim Musabekov, an independent foreign affairs analyst in Baku.
He said Khatami's visit was unlikely to lead to progress on the other thorny issue, the division of the Caspian.
"I do not expect there will be any breakthrough," he said. "For now, Iran does not see any dividends from resolving this issue, except on its own terms."
Though on political issues they often do not see eye-to-eye, Azerbaijan and Iran have much in common.
In both countries the Shia branch of Islam is the majority religion, while some 15 million Iranians, or 20 percent of the population, are ethnic Azeris. Baku and Tehran are also major trading partners.