CASPIAN SEA STATUS TALKS STALLED.

Deputy foreign ministers of the five Caspian countries completed three days of talks on the legal status of the Caspian Sea in Moscow yesterday. The talks failed in their stated purpose of preparing a Caspian Foreign Ministers’ Conference to work out that legal status. Further talks will be held to prepare the Foreign Ministers’ Conference, which has repeatedly been postponed. (Interfax, October 10) The Moscow talks had themselves been delayed in an attempt to prepare some form of consensus. The controversy pits Russia and Iran, which demand indivisibility of the Caspian and its mineral resources, against Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, which uphold the sectoral division and sovereign rights over resources in accordance with international law.

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