ASHKABAD, April 23: The opening day of a two-day summit on dividing the Caspian Sea ended with an apparent walkout by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, although Turkmen officials and summit participants promptly denied it.

Khatami left the closed-door meeting with members of his delegation and went straight to his car, ignoring journalists who had been told the five presidents of Caspian littoral states would come out together and make a joint statement.

In the confusion surrounding his swift and unexpected departure, officials in ex-Soviet Turkmenistan played down its significance.

“It’s normal,” said one foreign ministry official, adding that the meeting had reached its scheduled end. The five presidents were then due to attend an official dinner hosted by Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov.

Kazakhstan’s foreign minister, Kasymzhomart Tokayev, told Reuters Khatami had left to have a back problem attended to.

“He didn’t walk out, right now he’s having a medical examination,” he said.

The summit on dividing the Caspian, and its colossal oil and gas riches, between Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, was always expected to be difficult after a decade of disputes over who owns what.

Before it opened, Turkmen officials had said it would be hard to solve all the problems immediately, and called the summit, the first such meeting between the five presidents, “a first step.”

A new legal status for the landlocked Caspian is needed following the break up of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. Until then it was governed by a 1970 agreement between Iran and the Soviet Union, then the only littoral states.

The appearance of three more, all keen to enjoy the hydrocarbon wealth of the sea, has made a new division an urgent matter for them.

CASPIAN STATES: All five presidents made brief opening speeches at which the press were present, and it was quickly clear that they held positions which were going to be hard to bridge.