Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met his counterpart from Kazakhstan on Friday ahead of a tour of the Caspian Sea region, with the fate of its rich gas reserves high on Moscow's agenda.
Medvedev met Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Russian city of Orenburg, and the two were set to leave later for the Kazakh city of Aktau for a four-way summit with the leaders of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
The talks in Aktau between "will touch on energy and Caspian Sea issues," the Kremlin said in a statement on Friday.
Medvedev, Nazarbayev, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will meet in Aktau before heading to the Kazakh Caspian beach resort of Kenderli for "informal talks," it said.
Russia has backed the construction of a new gas pipeline from energy-rich Turkmenistan along the northeastern shore of the Caspian, through Kazakhstan and into Russia, which would feed gas supplies to the European Union.
But the E.U., which hopes to reduce its dependence on Russian energy supplies, supports the rival Nabucco pipeline that would deliver Caspian gas to southeastern Europe while bypassing Russia.
The Nabucco consortium wants to obtain much of its gas from Turkmenistan, an isolated ex-Soviet state that has long exported nearly all of its gas to Russia but which has been lately feuding with Moscow.
The summit of the four countries along the Caspian has raised alarm in the only other state with a shoreline on the inland sea, Iran.
"In our view the meeting runs contrary to Iran's national interests," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said according to Iranian state television channel Press TV earlier this week.
Iran and the four ex-Soviet states have been engaged for years in fruitless talks about dividing up the Caspain seabed, an issue that has major implications for offshore energy development.
Medvedev will conclude his Central Asia tour with a visit to Turkmenistan on Sunday where he is expected to attempt to mend fences after Russian-Turkmen relations were badly strained by a gas pipeline explosion in April.