Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan debt talks fail

Turkmenistan has rejected an Azeri proposal for repaying Azerbaijan's debts, which the Turkmens say total almost $60m.

The Azeri Deputy Prime Minister, Abbas Abbasov, who led a delegation to Turkmenistan to discuss the issue and a dispute between both countries over oil fields in the Caspian Sea, said the negotiations had been fruitless.

For its part Turkmenistan said double standards by a senior Azeri official were one of the main reasons for the failure of the talks, which ended yesterday.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service