Diplomatic battle begins over Arctic

Five Arctic coastal countries will meet in Greenland on Wednesday to discuss how to carve up the Arctic Ocean, which could hold up to one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves, far more than Saudia Arabia’s.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are squabbling over much of the Arctic seabed and Denmark has called them together for talks in its self-governing province to avert a free-for-all for the region’s resources.

Russia angered the other Arctic countries last year by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole in a headline-grabbing gesture that some criticised as a stunt.

Russia’s lead explorer Artur Chilingarov, declared at the time,: “The Arctic is ours,” thereby staking Moscow’s claim to 460,000 square miles of ocean floor, more than five times the area of Britain.

Canada, apparently taken by surprise, responded with a military build-up, as have Denmark in Greenland and the United States in Alaska… www.telegraph.co.uk

Posted by John Malloy on 05/28/2008. Filed under International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry