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Russian bear comes prowling Bombers intercepted just outside Canadian airspace; incident sets off prickly exchange, spurs Canada to seek common ground with US Gary Park For Petroleum News
Canada is raising an issue with the United States that has often soured relations between the two countries.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon put the topic of Arctic sovereignty back on the bilateral agenda in February when he met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.
And he’s expected to raise the volume even more when the two meet again this spring.
For Canada, achieving common ground with the U.S. has become even more urgent in the last month after two Russian bombers were intercepted just outside the Canadian Arctic shortly before President Barrack Obama’s Feb. 19 visit to Ottawa.
It evoked memories of Cold War days and prompted a stern rebuke from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who said he would not tolerate the Russians breaching Canadian airspace.
“I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe,” he said. “We will continue to respond; we will defend our airspace.”
Defense Minister Peter MacKay said two CF-18 fighter jets met at least one Russian bomber, although it later turned out there had been, in fact, two bombers.
Russia scoffed at Canada’s assertion that it had given no advance notice of the flights.
An aide to Russian military chief of staff said the flights were planned and the crews acted within the limits of international air agreements and did not violate Canadian airspace.
But Russia has also warned that it will respond to any attempts to militarize the Arctic by stepping up its patrols.
“It’s not a game,” MacKay said. “I’ve personally asked both the Russian ambassador and my counterpart that we are given a heads-up when this type of air traffic is to occur. And to date we have not received that kind of notice.”
“The statements from Canada’s defense ministry are perplexing to say the least and cannot be called anything other than a farce,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source in the Russian government as saying.
The Russians took a slightly less strident tone during talks with Denmark, when the two countries agreed that the battle for the Arctic’s oil and gas reserves — which also involves the United States, Canada and Norway — can only be resolved through international law.
Russians cite Arctic Council Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news briefing that “all problems in the Arctic, including climate change and reducing ice cover, can be successfully considered and resolved within specially created international organizations such as the Arctic Council.”
Denmark’s Foreign Minister Pier Stig Moller agreed that “international law should be used if there are contradicting claims from different states.”
The council was established in 1996 and includes the five countries with Arctic coastlines, who are allowed a 200-mile economic zone north of their shores, plus the Faroe Islands and Iceland, which lie just outside the Arctic Circle. It agreed 10 months ago to follow the United Nations convention on the Arctic.
But the battle now extends far beyond the economic zones as the Arctic icecap retreats, opening the way to eventual oil and gas exploration during the summer.
For Russia, one of the keys is an underwater ridge that links Siberia with the Arctic and where it plans to claim a sprawling section of the seabed which has an estimated 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its undiscovered gas.
Cannon later said Canada wants to work with Russia to advance their “common interests” in the Arctic in an overture that appeared designed to defuse the simmering tension that started in 2007 when a Russian submarine planted a flag under the North Pole.
Canada hedging its bets But Canada also seems to be hedging its bets by updating the U.S. on its efforts to militarize the Arctic and ease U.S. concerns about security threats in the region.
The Harper government plans to spend billions of dollars building six to eight offshore patrol vessels capable of breaking up first-year ice; establishing a refueling site in Nunavut Territory; and constructing a new C$720 million icebreaker scheduled to replace its existing ice-breaker in 2017.
It is also expected that Cannon will present Clinton with a convincing legal case that there is no history of the Northwest Passage being used as an international waterway. It has been used by U.S. ships three times since 1904 without Canadian permission, although on two occasions Canadian icebreakers were needed to rescue the ice-bound U.S. ships.
However, the U.S. shows no signs of backing down from its insistence that it has freedom of navigation within the Northwest Passage.
Canadian government sources say Russia’s drive to extend its border north by 150 miles and add about 20 percent to its oil and gas reserves, along with worries about a new Cold War, should give Cannon and Clinton the incentive to ensure that the Northwest Passage does not become the final stumbling block to the Arctic sovereignty debate.
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