Caspian summit makes little progress

The first day of talks at the summit of leaders of the five states which border the Caspian Sea has ended in the Turkmenistan capital, Ashkabad, with little agreement on the decade-long dispute on how to divide the inland sea's copious gas and oil reserves.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told delegates at the two-day summit that any agreement on sharing out the territorial waters needed to be unanimous - with no outside interference from other states.

Iran and Turkmenistan are seeking to split the Caspian Sea equally five ways - but the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan prefer a settlement based on splitting the Caspian into sectors relative to the length of each country's natural shoreline.

A BBC correspondent in Ashkabad says expectations of what the summit will achieve have been set low, with the attending leaders agreeing that without consensus the region's oil and gas reserves will remain undeveloped.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service