8 August 2007Yahoo! NewsMichel Comte
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper set off Wednesday on an Arctic trek to bolster his nation's disputed claim to the frigid far north, one week after Russia planted a flag at the North Pole.
And he would be followed in the coming days by a large Canadian military force on an "Arctic sovereignty" mission off the coast of Baffin Island.
"All Canadians need to recognize, there is a convergence of economic, environmental and strategic factors occurring here that will have critical impacts on the future of our country," Harper said at his first stop in Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories.
The North is "largely untamed, sometimes harsh and always magnificent, a vast storehouse of energy and mineral riches, and a precious reservoir of ecological and cultural treasures," he said.
And he vowed to "take action to vigorously protect our Arctic sovereignty as international interest in the region increases."
Canada is at odds with Russia, Denmark, Norway and the United States over 1.2 million square kilometers (460,000 square miles) of Arctic seabed, thought to hold 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves.
The international rivalry in the region has heated up as energy reserves grow scarce in other parts of the world and as melting polar ice caps make the area more accessible to research and economic activity.
As well, time is running out for signatories to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to stake their claims to the region, as deadlines loom to prove their rights.
Russia ratified the treaty in 1997 and has until the end of this year to prove its claim. Canada has until 2013.
US President George W. Bush, meanwhile, has been pushing the US Congress to ratify the international pact to allow Washington to submit scientific data to the United Nations in pursuit of its own claim.
Last week, a Russian mini-submarine reached the bottom of the Arctic Ocean under the North Pole at a depth of 4,261 meters (13,980 feet), to carry out scientific tests and leave a Russian flag.
Tuesday, a US Coast Guard icebreaker was reportedly dispatched to the North Pole, via the Bering Sea, in response.
The Russian flag-planting was immediately ridiculed by Ottawa and Washington, described by Canada's Foreign Minister Peter MacKay as a "15th-century" stunt.
"Canada's sovereignty over the lands and waters of the Arctic is longstanding, well-established and based on historic title," a spokesman for Canada's foreign affairs department told AFP.
The doctrine of discovery was used during the quest for the "new world," entitling Europeans to claim unoccupied lands, or territories populated by pagans.
But many adventurers have planted flags at the North Pole since American Robert Peary first arrived at the top of the world in 1909, long before the Russian arrival last week.
Even so, Russian expedition leader Artur Chilingarov received a hero's homecoming Tuesday in Moscow, greeted by a military brass band and adoring children who gave him a plush polar bear as a gift.
Scholars urged Ottawa and Washington, which are at odds over the famed Northwest Passage, to join forces to counter Russia's Arctic grab.
"The real threat to US interests is the Russian bear, not the Canadian beaver," Eric Posner, an international law professor at the University of Chicago, wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
But Washington is unlikely to modify its position that the Northwest Passage is international waters, knowing that Canada does not have the capability of securing its northern frontier year-round, Joel Plouffe, an Arctic geopolitical expert at Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM), told AFP.
This week, Harper is expected to announce the site of Canada's first Arctic deep water port to strengthen its Arctic stance, then meet up with 800 Canadian soldiers, federal police and Inuit rangers training in the eastern Arctic.
The three-million-dollar expedition known as Operation Nanook involves a Canadian Coast Guard frigate, a navy ship and submarine, fighter jets and support aircraft operating in Frobisher Bay, Hudson Strait and Davis Strait.
It follows plans announced last month by Harper to build six to eight ice-breaking patrol ships to prevent trespass on Canada's northern lands and to reaffirm its claim to the disputed Arctic, at a cost of 7.1 billion dollars.
