U.S. and Canada bury hatchet to curb Russia's Arctic bid.

No suprise that Harper should form a partnership with the U.S. even though the U.S. does not recognise the Northwest Passage as Canadian waters and has a conflict with us in regard where to divide the ridge. How this co-operation is supposed to fit in with our own claims that conflict with the U.S. is problematic. Of course the U.S. so far has not even ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea the basis for settling the conflicting claims!


US and Canada bury hatchet to curb Russia's Arctic bid
By Christopher Mason in Ottawa
Published: August 18 2008 03:00 Last updated: August 18 2008 03:00
Unexpected partnerships are forming among nations vying to extend their Arctic undersea territories as they join to counter Russia's aggressive Arctic claims.
A United States coastguard icebreaker left port in Alaska last week to join a Canadian icebreaker to conduct a seismic survey of the Beaufort seabed north of the Yukon-Alaska border.
Both countries are gathering research to support their claim to Arctic territories that may hold vast natural resources and potential new shipping routes.
Canada and the US say a past land dispute over 12,000 sq km of seabed elsewhere in the Beaufort Sea is being put aside in the name of defending against Russia's Arctic claims, which clash with those of the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway.
"The Russians know what they want the Arctic for, and under Putin and Medvedev they have been very aggressive," said Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. "They are way ahead of everyone else."
The issue of who owns the North Pole was a backburner issue while the region was encased in ice.
But warmer temperatures suggest the region, which may hold up to one-quarter of the world's remaining oil and gas reserves, could soon be put into play as thinning ice makes it accessible.
This month, Canadian and Danish scientists claimed the Lomonosov Ridge under the North Pole was connected to the North American and Greenland plates.
The two countries may disagree on where to divide the ridge among themselves, but they agree it is not an extension of the Russian continental shelf.
Countries are allowed to extend their control of the seabed beyond customary limits if they can demonstrate that it is part of their continental shelf.
Moscow first claimed the Lomonosov Ridge in 2001 and reasserted that last year when a Russian submarine planted a Russian flag in the seabed under the North Pole.
The US position on the Arctic is tricky because
Congress has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which will ultimately govern the claims. But US officials are moving forward in the hope it is ratified before the UN deadline for territorial claims in 2013.
This month, Michael Chertoff, homeland security secretary, toured the American coastguard's operations in Alaska. In a radio interview before the tour, Thad Allen, coastguard commandant admiral, said increased interest in the Arctic might force the US to change tack.
"This will deal with more issues of sovereignty, security presence and things like that," he said. "The question is: What do we want to project up here?"

Five Arctic powers to meet in Greenland

This is from smh. Note that Canada not only has a dispute with Denmark over a tiny uninhabited island but a much larger issue with the U.S. over whether the northwest passage is international waters.



Five Arctic powers to meet in Greenland

May 25, 2008 - 11:47AM
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Representatives of the five countries bordering the Arctic will meet in Greenland on Wednesday to discuss the impact of climate change on the icy region - and how to divide up its as-yet untapped rich resources.
"We must solve our problems peacefully and through accords in line with international law," said Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, who with the head of the local Greenland government Hans Enoksen, will host the meeting.
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are at odds over 1.2 million square kilometres of Arctic seabed.
According to the US Geological Survey, it could hold 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
The United States will be represented at the meeting in Ilulissat in western Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, by its deputy foreign policy chief John Negroponte.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be in Stockholm participating in a conference on Iraq.
The meeting will also be attended by Moeller, Enoksen, Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Stoere.
The rivalry between the five Arctic neighbours has heated up as melting polar ice makes the region more accessible. Scientists saying the Northwest Passage could open up to year-round shipping by 2050.
Denmark and Canada have a longstanding disagreement over who owns the tiny, uninhabited, ice-covered Hans island, which straddles Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island.
Canada and the United States are at odds over the sovereignty of the Northwest Passage that links the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
Last year, Russian explorers claimed to have planted their national flag at the bottom of the ocean, at a depth of more than 4,000 metres, after an expedition aimed at underlining Moscow's aspirations to Arctic territory.
"South Africa can also plant its flag there if it wants," said Moeller. But it did not mean anything when it came to Arctic territorial claims, he added.
Moeller insisted on the necessity of respecting existing international accords.
According to international law, each of the countries bordering the Arctic hold sovereignty over a zone measuring 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres).
That leaves 1.2 million square kilometres of unclaimed territory in an area believed to hold vast petroleum riches.
The UN convention on the Law of the Sea gives countries that are signatories to the treaty the possibility of challenging claims of seabed sovereignty if they want to assert their claims beyond the 200-nautical-mile zone. They have 10 years to do so after ratifying the convention.
All the countries bordering the Arctic have ratified the convention except the United States, but Moeller said he did not expect the final status of the icy region to be determined until 2020.
Climate change meanwhile, which is rendering the region increasingly accessible, has increased the stakes, making the need for an international resolution of the conflicting claims in the area more pressing.
Maritime security and protection of the fragile Arctic ecosystem will also be hot items on the agenda at the May 28 meeting.
The Arctic ice caps are in fact melting at "rates significantly faster than predicted", according to a study published last month by conservation group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet, currently at their lowest levels ever recorded, was happening so fast experts were now questioning whether the situation was close to the "tipping point", it added.
The tipping point is the point at which sudden and possibly irreversible change takes place.
© 2008 AFP