Lavrov: No war over Arctic resources
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismisses suggestions that world powers could fight a war over valuable Arctic natural resources as a “provocation”.
- Any problems in the North, including the problems of demarcating maritime territory, are subject to political and judicial solutions and that’s why rumors that a war will break out over the resources in the North are a provocation, Lavrov said at a 2010 summary press conference on Thursday, RIA Novosti reports.
Lavrov called the Murmansk Agreement on delineation of the Barents Sea between Norway and Russia a “historical achievement” and said that all conditions and demarcations in the agreement are according to international law, justice and balance between the two sides.
- This agreement is an example that all problems in the North are subject to political solutions, Lavrov said.
Some, amongst them US Admiral James G Stavridis, Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, have claimed that global warming and a race for resources could spark a new ‘cold war’ in the Arctic.
Read also: Norwegian scientists: No armed fight for resources foreseen in the Arctic
In his speech Lavrov also mentioned that the Russian fishery sector has been worried that the agreement with Norway will make it harder to conduct fishing in the Barents Sea. According to the Foreign Minister, the agreement states clearly that the conditions for neither Russian nor Norwegian fishermen will be made more difficult, on the contrary: - All questions connected to fishing in the area will be solved through existing and time-tested mechanisms in the Joint Russian-Norwegian Fishery Committee, he said.
