Lessons on cooperation building to manage water conflicts in the Aral Sea Basin; Technical documents in hydrology: pc-cp series; Vol.: 11; 2003

participation of a foreign expert, will be responsible for preparation of a legal 
framework and further improvement of existing texts. The order of work is as follows: 
● 
Once a draft has been prepared, it should be disseminated between states and 
become a subject of discussion at the national level. 
● 
In each state the government appoints a national coordinator as well as a 
national negotiation team that includes representatives from each national body 
interested in water management, use, and protection. The national coordinator is 
responsible for collecting various opinions and preparing a single national 
opinion, which must then be approved by the Deputy Prime Minister who is a 
member of the IFAS Board. 
● 
Presentations collected from each state are assessed by a regional group, and 
then the IFAS executive committee and the SIC of the ICWC organize the next 
meeting of states’ representatives. 
● The next revision of the document should be directed towards achieving 
consensus among the members of the interstate group, and the revised text is 
then returned to the states for their approval. 
The working group charged with setting up a legal framework would be responsible for 
clarifying the implications for national laws that affect
interstate relations in terms of 
water and the development of the IWRM. Such a process may continue for a long time 
until full approval is given by the different organizations. Unfortunately, the 
negotiation process has no official status or schedule, although the routine processes 
of negotiations between members of the ICWC have regularly reached final decisions. 
In these negotiations, the leaders of BWOs and the SIC of the ICWC, like the invited 
experts, have the right to express their opinions but not to participate in the vote: the 
final decisions are to be made on the base of consensus only among members of 
ICWC. We hope that the world community can identify donors to support the ICWC 
and IFAS in this creative activity.