Black Sea Forum for Partnership and Dialogue Black Sea Forum for Partnership and Dialogue The inaugural session of the Black Sea Forum for Partnership and Dialogue (BSF) was held on June 4–6, 2006 in Bucharest. The Forum is a Romanian initiative, initially meant to hold annual presidential-level summits (the venues rotating among participant countries) and thematic or sectoral-cooperation meeting during those annual intervals. The Forum is not meant to create new regional institutions, but rather to turn into a regular consultative process among countries of the extended Black Sea region (defined as including the South Caucasus to the Caspian Sea) and between this group of countries and
Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea presence of numerous oil fields on the seabed of the Caspian Sea the question of legal status was very important; some countries even tried to develop fields in disputed regions, almost causing military incidents. In order to elaborate a Convention on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, a special working group at the level of deputy foreign ministers was established in 1996 by the Caspian states. The agreement of the document lasted more than 20 years before its signing on 12 August 2018 by the heads of five Caspian states at the summit in Kazakhstan. During the years of