President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the Law On Amendments and Addenda to Certain Legislative Instruments of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Issues Related to Activities at the Caspian Sea”, the press service of the head of state informed on Tuesday.
This document is aimed at bringing the national legislation of Kazakhstan in line with the provisions contained in the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, adopted at the Fifth Caspian Summit on August 12, 2018, inbusiness.kz reports.
“The Aktau Convention creates a new legal regime of the Caspian Sea that meets modern requirements, becoming a new framework for a balanced international legal system of relations between coastal countries at sea”, Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Mukhtar Tleuberdi said, presenting the bill to the Senate of the RK Parliament in early February.
He stressed that a consensus had been reached between the Caspian states on demarcation of the water area into zones with different regimes such as internal waters, 15 nautical miles wide territorial waters, ten-mile fishing zones and a common water area.
“As part of implementing the conventional rules in the Law On the State Border of the Republic of Kazakhstan, it is proposed to increase the width of the territorial waters from 12 to 15 nautical miles, replace the concept “regime of territorial waters at sea” and “internal waters” with “regime of internal and territorial waters”, introduce a regime within the fishing zone that determines the procedure for conducting marine scientific research and catching aquatic biological resources in this area”, the Deputy Prime Minister said.
The law also establishes the competence of the National Security Committee to adopt legal regulations on organizing the shipbuilding operations, approving the description and application of identification marks and external painting of ships of the Border Guard Service of Kazakhstan.