Observers believe the decision to put off the latest set of top-level negotiations several times over the last year shows there has been "a toughening up" in the positions of the five coastal countries involved -- Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Iran.
"The current controversy in the Caspian Sea is not about where the boundaries should be located but about establishing whether there should even be boundaries at all," says Dr Sergei Vinogradov, a senior research fellow at Dundee University.
Vinogradov
