Russia-Canada ‘natural’ Arctic partners

Russian envoy calls for regional cooperation to head off jurisdictional disputes; says it is time to copy Russia-Norway agreement

Gary Park

For Petroleum News

When U.S. astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969 they planted the Stars and Stripes.

When climbers ascend Mount Everest they leave behind their national flags.

When a submarine took Russian scientists to the seabed under the North Pole in 2007 they secured their flag to the seabed.

All of those events were a triumph of technology and the human spirit and in no way represented a claim of sovereignty, said Anton Vasiliev, Russian Ambassador at Large for Arctic issues, in scoffing at Canadian government concerns last summer when a Russian bomber skirted Canada’s northern airspace and was challenged by Canadian fighter jets.

Speaking in Canada at a conference on Canada-Norway-Russia cooperation, he insisted that complaints by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and senior cabinet ministers “came from a lack of knowledge of reality.”

Norway’s deputy foreign minister Espen Barth Eide echoed Vasiliev’s views, telling the conference that Russia has made no significant claims following the submarine episode, adding: “The Moon isn’t American because there’s an American flag up there.”

Vasiliev said an agreement between Russia and Norway last year on delineation of the Barents Sea, settling a 40-year Arctic border dispute, opens new horizons of cooperation between the two countries.

He said it is an “encouraging precedent” for Russia and Canada as they try to resolve undersea boundaries of the Arctic Ocean and agree on ownership of massive natural resource deposits.

Barth Eide agreed that the Barents pact should be viewed by Canada as a reason to tone down its rhetoric toward Russia, describing it as “an area where we can see the benign side of Russia and where we see the collaborative Russia.”

Vasiliev said the Russian government believes the Arctic “is becoming more and more a territory of dialogue, a territory of cooperation. This is a drastic change compared with the Cold War years.”

He said Russia does not see any looming military challenges in the Arctic, or problems that might require military solutions.

As Arctic region countries develop their claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Vasiliev said 2010 was especially successful for Russia as “our country managed to gather enough scientific evidence proving that the Lomonosov Ridge underneath the pole and the Mendeleev Ridge are extensions of the Eurasian continent.”

At the same time he said it “should be very clear in legal terms” that the borders of the continental shelf are not national borders.

He said Russia respects Canadian sovereignty and understands the importance of natural resources to the five major Arctic nations — the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark.

Vasiliev said contacts among those nations are more active than ever before and include the creation of a joint group to carry out a hydrographic survey aimed at improving navigation in the region, while coast guards of the G5 nations have agreed to hold a special meeting in 2012.

These cooperative efforts are evidence of a post-Cold War era of cooperation, which is supported by a Danish government map that shows about 96 percent of Arctic resources belong to the five nations, he said.

“It’s very hard for us to change our mentality, to adapt ourselves to the changing world, but we have to do that because the world has changed,” Vasiliev said.

A spokesman for Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said the Harper government makes no apologies for investing in the Arctic, including moves to establish a military outpost and to build a special icebreaker.

One of Canada’s top concerns is control over the Northwest Passage, including its right to regulate the movement of vessels in the area as the shrinking ice pack extends the open water season.

Vasiliev said Russia is not arguing that the Northwest Passage should be an international waterway, but he noted that the Russia-Norway agreement has set the stage for an international sea route through the Northeast Passage, following two major transits last year and 10 scheduled for this year.