Americas

Home page

Americas

Harper: Canada encourages outsiders to join development in Arctic region

27 August 2011 03:21 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday that Canada encourages countries outside of the Arctic region to participate the development in the region, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Harper made the remarks at a press conference after visiting a culture center for aboriginal residents in Haines Junction, Yukon Territory on the last leg of his sixth annual tour of the northern part of Canada since he took power in 2006.

"We hope to encourage cooperative activity and peaceful transit and peaceful development within the broader region outside our sovereign territory," he told Xinhua.

However, Harper confined the cooperation are to international territories in the Arctic region and through certain organizations.

"Obviously outside of sovereign territories, in the international territories, through the Arctic Council and other organizations," he explained.

The Arctic Council, formed in 1996 by eight Arctic countries, is a high-level intergovernmental forum to promote cooperation on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic.

The eight members -- Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United States, Sweden and Finland -- have granted the status of Permanent Observer to France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom, while China, the EU, Italy, Japan and South Korea were granted Ad-hoc Observer States.

Harper stressed the importance of Canada’s sovereignty in its Arctic territory.

"In terms of the Arctic region, obviously significant parts of the Arctic region, vast areas of land and significant territorial waters, are under the sovereignty of various countries, including a significant part of the Arctic region is under the direct sovereignty of Canada," said the prime minister.

Harper said Canada is working with its partners and people in this region to assert their sovereignty in their Arctic regions.

"We also are working cooperatively with other nations through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to establish various extended claims through the Arctic continental shelf and that work continues peacefully," Harper concluded.

At the start of his tour in Resolute, Nunavut on Tuesday, Harper inspected more than 1,100 Canadian Armed Forces personnel and 180 members of the Canadian Coast Guard, who are taking part in Operation Nanook 11 from August 5 to 26, 2011.

The annual Operation Nanook, the largest Canadian Arctic military exercise in history in a bid to provide a visible presence in the Arctic and demonstrate Canada’s ability to respond to emergency situations in the region, was conducted every summer since 2007, primarily in the eastern and high Arctic.