KAZAKHSTAN….

President Nursultan Nazarbaev met top Russian officials in a Moscow summit July 7-9. The two sides signed an agreement that divides the northern Caspian seabed along a median line. Russia and Kazakhstan would hold joint exclusive rights to oil and gas deposits astride the line, or discovered before the signing of the agreement. The dividing line will be drawn in follow-up negotiations and codified in a separate document to be attached to the main agreement. Like the line itself, nearly every term in the agreement requires further negotiation. A discussion of debt failed to resolve who owes whom how much, so a mutual settlement of claims is still far off.July 13, 1998: page 1