Tehran, Dec 29, IRNA -- Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi here Sunday reiterated Iran's rejection of bilateral deals over the Caspian Sea that has yet to be divided by its five littoral states for the exploitation of its hydrocarbon and other riches.

"Iran does not recognize bilateral agreements of the Caspian Sea's littoral countries," he said at at open session of the Iranian Parliament where answered MPs' questions on the issue.

Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have failed so far to find a common ground on how to divide the land-locked sea, while reports of bilateral deals among some of the coastal countries have triggered hiccups.

"As far as the legal regime of the Caspian Sea has not been established, bilateral agreements will have no validity," Kharrazi said.

The ongoing dispute is mainly over how to carve up the sea's bed before starting any oil or gas prospecting. Iran and Turkmenistan favor an equal 20 percent share for each of the coastal states if they opt to divide the in-land sea. However Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan believe that the sea should be divided according to the size of the coastline of each nation.

"We must reach an agreement on exploiting the seabed resources and this needs to be sorted out through a special protocol," the Iranian minister said.

"On the surface, all boundaries including shipping and fishing are demarcated, but the legal regime of the seabed has to be clarified," he added.

Kharrazi reiterated Iran's priority for the application of condominium concept or principle of common sovereignty on the Caspian Sea.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran's priority in the Caspian Sea is to apply the regime of condominium and littoral countries have reached agreements over their disputed stances," he said.

The five countries agreed at a summit in Turkmen capital, Ashkhabad in May 2002 to keep up the negotiations to reduce their differences.

Russian presidential envoy on the Caspian, Viktor Kalyuzhny, said recently in Tehran that coastal states believed the sea's existing status was ineffective and had developed a consensus to draw up a new formula to divide it.

The existing agreements on the sea are related to 1921 and 1940 between Iran and the Soviet Union, which do not say how to divide the Caspian seabed.

"In the agreements 1921 and 1940, no word has been mentioned about the legal regime of the seabed and this must be taken care of in the new protocol," Kharrazi said.

The Iranian foreign minister was answering to over 80 MPs' grilling over his ministry's alleged failure to guarantee national interests in the Caspian Sea.