The Japanese Trade Minister, Takashi Fukaya, is having talks with senior officials in Saudi Arabia to try to secure a renewal of oil drilling rights which are due to expire next month.

The main sticking point in negotiations so far is said to have been Saudi demands for Japan to invest more than two billion dollars in a fifteen-hundred kilometre railway project to access remote mining areas.

The offshore concession is held by Japan's government-backed Arabian Oil Company -- its largest oil producer.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service