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Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrived Monday in the Turkmen capital and met President Saparmurad Niyazov ahead of the summit, which also is to include Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijan's Geidar Aliev and Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Although Niyazov has characterized the summit as "a historic event," the prospects for a complete resolution of the issue were unclear.
The Caspian Sea is believed to contain the world's third largest reserves of oil and gas after the Persian Gulf and Siberia. Russia, Iran and the three former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan all want their fair share of the Caspian's largely untapped riches.
Resolving the dispute is seen as important to the region's development and stability. U.S. and other foreign investors have jockeyed for a chance to develop the Caspian fields and the United States has strongly backed a planned oil pipeline between Azerbaijan and Turkey, which bypasses Russia.
Once regulated by treaties signed in 1921 and 1940 between the Soviet Union and Iran that gave each of those countries an equal share, the status of the Caspian has been unresolved ever since the Soviet collapse in 1991.
The emergence of new countries on the Caspian coastline has threatened Iran, which does not want to see its share diminished and apparently intends to push to maintain its 50 percent share, or at least see that the sea is divided into five equal parts.
Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan previously all have expressed support for dividing the sea according to national sectors along median lines that would leave Iran with the smallest share. Last year, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement outlining their common position as saying that while the seabed should be divided into national sectors, the water should be left for common use.
Throughout the past decade, Turkmenistan has waffled over what its position on dividing the seabed would be. In the run-up to the summit, Niyazov has hinted his country would present a "surprise" solution but provided no details.
Niyazov's proposals, according to news reports in Russia, may address some of the less contentious issues of use of the sea surface, navigation and fishing rights. There is little indication that the volatile issue of the dispute seabed is close to being solved.
The disputes have led to delays in the construction of a major pipeline to deliver the still buried oil and gas deposits to international markets and slowed international exploration contracts.
Estimates on just how much oil is under the Caspian waters range from 90 billion to 200 billion barrels.
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