Mr Eizenstat was giving testimony to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing investigating the Caspian Sea area and US policy towards it.

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In the area between the Black and the Caspian Seas lie countless festering issues, including separatist disaffection in two parts of Georgia, a territorial row between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the question of a pipeline to carry oil to the Mediterranean via Turkey.

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Dagestan is one of seven small republics within the Russian Federation that together comprise Russia's North Caucasus region, a predominantly Muslim area which itself is wedged between the Caspian and Black Seas.

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