COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Denmark's science minister on Tuesday dismissed recent moves by Russia and Canada to assert sovereignty over the Arctic, saying flag-planting and political visits would not settle any territorial claims in the potentially resource-rich region.
The scramble for control of the Arctic heated up two weeks ago when Russia sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole. Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spent three days in the Canadian Arctic.
Harper announced that Canada would build two new military facilities within contested Arctic waters to bolster its sovereign claim over the fabled Northwest Passage.
He said the Canadian Forces will create a new army training centre and a deep-water port at distant points of the Arctic archipelago.
"No matter how many flags you plant or how many prime ministers you send, that doesn't become a valid parameter in the process," Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation, told reporters.
Denmark sent a team of scientists to the Arctic ice pack on Sunday to seek evidence that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 2,000-kilometre underwater mountain range, is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland.
The Danish expedition, which had been planned for years, might allow the Danes to stake a claim under a UN treaty that could stretch all the way to the North Pole, although Canada and Russia also claim the ridge.
The United States and Norway also have claims in the vast Arctic region, where a U.S. study suggests as much as 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden.
Russia and Canada "also have serious projects. But the lowering of the flag was simply a summer joke," Sander said.
The race for sovereignty in the Arctic is heating up partly because global warming is shrinking the polar ice, which could someday open up resource development and new shipping lanes.
The pressure is also on the Arctic nations because of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which gives them 10 years after ratification to prove their claims under the largely uncharted polar ice pack. All but the United States have ratified the treaty.
Denmark which also plans expeditions in 2009 and 2011, expects to tender its claim in 2014, Sander said.
