The meeting ended with mutual recriminations, illustrating the unresolved tensions that continue to stymie a solution. At the conclusion of the two-day talks in Turkmenistan's capital of Ashkhabad, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry denounced Azerbaijan for an alleged lack of good faith bargaining. According to the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS, Document No. CEP-261, May 3, 2001), Turkmenistan asserted that Azerbaijan's insistence on drawing a sectoral line closer to the coast of Turkmenistan than to its own "contradicts the principle of justice and equality." Turkmenistan demanded, pending the settlement of the dispute, that Azerbaijan and foreign energy firms "stop all projects connected with the exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons, including seismologic surveys …in zones of the Caspian Sea arguably between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan." The Turkmen Foreign Ministry stated that it would appeal to international bodies for help in drawing the line and would protest Azerbaijan's alleged encroachment on Turkmen territory to the International Arbitration Court.
On the same day, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the very holding of the Azerbaijani-Turkmen talks, stating the legal status of the Caspian Sea should be determined by each of the five coastal, or littoral, states surrounding the Sea.
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