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Denmark to open consulate in Iqaluit

"The first country to be represented in Nunavut"

JANE GEORGE

A plan to open a Danish consulate in Iqaluit shows Denmark and Canada are more neighbours than enemies, despite their dispute over who owns Hans Island, the tiny rock located between Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

"In order to emphasize the relationship and facilitate even closer co-operation in the future, Denmark is in the final phase of opening an honorary consulate in Iqaluit, making Denmark the first country to be represented in Nunavut," says Poul E. D. Kristensen, Denmark's ambassador to Canada.

Canada and Denmark are also collaborating on a major scientific mapping project. This will help determine sovereignty over Hans Island and - much more importantly - which nation can lay claim to potentially rich undersea resources in the surrounding Arctic Ocean.

In their competing bid to claim the North Pole region, the two nations share a common goal and an enemy. That's because Russia wants the Arctic Ocean to be divided into sectors, so sovereignty over the pole would be split - and this would result in much less control for Canada or Denmark.

In an open letter to the Canadian public, which was reprinted last week in several national newspapers, Kristensen says Denmark appreciates that "the larger issue of sovereignty in the North is a real concern to Canada," and suggests the dispute over Hans Island be settled by negotiations and "the rule of law."

In fact, that process is already well underway.

A joint Canada/Denmark $75 million mapping project will collect data for the redrawing of the continental shelf line in the Arctic Ocean north of Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

The mapping will show whether Greenland or Ellesmere Island is attached to the 2,000 kilometre-long Lomonosov Ridge that runs through the North Pole, dividing the Arctic Ocean into two parts. Canada and Denmark want to divide the North Pole along the Lomonosov Ridge and not into sectors, as Russia is proposing.

Both Canada and Denmark have ratified the 1986 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. This gives them the right to make claims beyond 200 nautical miles of new land and underwater resources in the Arctic Ocean. The two have until 2013 to make their claims.

With the joint seabed mapping project, Kristensen says, "we will be better equipped to divide the land and sea according to each country's wishes," when time comes to file individual claims on behalf of Canada and Denmark.

Meanwhile, Hans Island continues to attract attention in the Canadian media and on the Internet.

One website at www.petitionspot.com/petitions/hansisland collected signatures on a petition, asking Canada's former ambassador to Denmark, Alfonso Gagliano, who is now in disgrace over his role in the sponsorship scandal, to be sent as an official representative to Hans Island:

"Since the posting on Hans Island will inevitably involve terse contacts and intense negotiations with the government of Denmark, we must select someone who knows his way around the higher circles of Copenhagen politics and who has had contacts with the Danish people before... we believe we have found the ideal person, a veteran of federal politics who became a pariah in Ottawa and who has the necessary first-hand knowledge of Denmark when he served there as our ambassador."

Last week, a search on the Google Internet search engine produced a paid advertisement with the banner headline: "Hans Island is Greenland. Greenland natives have used the island for centuries."

A Toronto resident, Rick Broadhead, paid $200 to place a competing Google ad, which featured a Canadian flag and the national anthem.

A website devoted to the "Hans Island Liberation Front" said "the people of Hans island yearn to breathe free! Free from the oppression of Canadian and Danish interlopers."

Meanwhile, a Danish navy ship, the Tulugaq, is heading to Hans Island. Every summer, this inspection ship sails to the northwestern coast of Greenland and tries to visit Hans Island, although sea ice often prevents its arrival. Since 1988, inspection ships have reached Hans Island four times, Alex Jensen, the Greenland command's spokesperson, said.

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