News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to defend his country's sovereignty over its northernmost territories yesterday after Moscow sent two submarines deep under the North Pole ice to plant a flag on the ocean floor.

"It shows once again that sovereignty over the North and sovereignty over the Arctic is going to be an important issue as we move into the future," Mr. Harper told reporters at a news conference in Charlottetown where his Conservative party was holding a summer caucus meeting.

"This government has put a real emphasis on northern and Arctic sovereignty and we will continue to do so and we will move quickly in that regard."

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay had even tougher words for the Russians.

"There is no question over Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic," Mr. MacKay said.

"We've established a long time ago that these are Canadian waters and this is Canadian property. You can't go around the world these days dropping a flag somewhere. This isn't the 14th or 15th century."

The two deep-diving Mir mini-submarines were sent on their sub-Arctic expedition to bolster Russian claims to much of the area's oil and mineral wealth.

They dropped a titanium capsule containing the nation's flag on the bottom, symbolically claiming almost half of the planet's northern polar region for Moscow.

"If someone else goes down there in 100 or 1,000 years, he will see our Russian flag," expedition leader Artur Chilingarov, 68, a famed polar scientist, said after returning.

It was unclear yesterday how Canada will respond to the incident.

"I think you are going to see very quickly that the law of the sea, protocols of which both Russia and Canada are signatories at the UN, would immediately kick in were there to be any dispute. And there is no dispute. This is Canadian territory, plain and simple," Mr. MacKay said.

"The question of Arctic sovereignty is not a question. It's clear. It's our country. It's our water. ... It's the "True North strong and free" and they are fooling themselves if they think dropping a flag on the ocean floor is going to change anything."

Yesterday, Washington said Russia's move to plant its flag on the seabed under the North Pole has no bearing on claims for subaquatic rights.

"I'm not sure of whether they've put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bedsheet on the ocean floor," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

"Either way, it doesn't have any legal standing or effect on this claim," he said.

Mr. Harper, who heads to the Arctic next week, announced last month that the federal government will spend more than $7-billion to buy and maintain six to eight Canadian-made ships that are capable of patrolling the northern ocean. They will be able to plow through ice that is up to a metre thick; a deep-water port will be built to service them.

The Russians, meanwhile, are not the only ones eyeing the Arctic seabed.

The Danish government, which also has extensive Arctic claims because of its sovereignty over Greenland, scoffed at Russia's planting of the titanium flag capsule on the seabed.

"We note that with a smile because we don't think it has any impact on any legal claims to the continental shelf or the North Pole," said Peter Taksoe-Jensen, legal adviser to the Danish Foreign Ministry, in an interview from Copenhagen. "It's more a media stunt than anything else."

Like Canada, Denmark is preparing its claim to the region around the pole under the UN Law of the Sea Convention.

"Greenland is also very close to the North Pole. We are now collecting technical data in order to support the submission that we are going to make" in five or six years' time.

Despite the tiff over ownership of Hans Island in 2005, Canada and Denmark are co-operating on a joint venture to collect technical data on the continental shelf. "We have a very fruitful co-operation with Canada," Mr. Taksoe-Jensen said.

The Russian scientists in the submarines were to map part of the Lomonosov ridge, a 2,000-kilometre underwater mountain range that crosses the polar region.

In December 2001, Moscow claimed that the ridge was an extension of the Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia's continental shelf under international law. The UN rejected Moscow's application, citing lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009.

With reports from the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse