Strifes will arise throughout the period. Watch for them NEAR THE DAVIS
STRAIT in the attempts there for the keeping of the lifeline to a land
open. Watch for them in Libya and in Egypt, in Ankara and in Syria,
through the straits about those areas above Australia, in the Indian
Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
Canada's Next Leader Clashes With U.S. Over Arctic Waterways
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By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: January 27, 2006
TORONTO, Jan. 26 - Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister-designate,
reproached the American ambassador on Thursday over an old difference
of opinion about the control of Arctic waters claimed by Canada.
Mr. Harper, the leader of the Conservative Party, which won a narrow
victory in Monday's elections, is widely expected to usher in warmer
relations with the Bush administration after years of squabbles between
Canada and the United States over trade and the war in Iraq.
But the honeymoon took at least a temporary break when Mr. Harper
reacted to a news report about comments made by the United States
ambassador, David H. Wilkins, taking issue with Canada's assertion of
sovereignty in northern Arctic water passages.
"It is the Canadian people we get our mandate from, not the ambassador
of the United States," Mr. Harper said. "The United States defends its
sovereignty, and the Canadian government will defend our sovereignty."
The United States for decades has opposed Canada's claims to Arctic
passageways near the North Pole, as have the European Union and other
countries. Canadian military scholars say that the United States,
Russia, Britain and France sent submarines under the Arctic ice in
waters claimed by Canada during the cold war without Canada's
permission, and may still be doing so.
Canada does not currently have the naval ability to stop such
intrusions into those areas, which it claims as internal waters,
although it is now modernizing satellite surveillance and upgrading its
Arctic land and water patrols.
"There's no reason to create a problem that doesn't exist," Mr. Wilkins
was quoted as saying at a forum on American-Canadian relations on
Wednesday at the University of Western Ontario, according to the CBC
News Web site. "We don't recognize Canada's claims to those waters."
Mr. Wilkins seemed to be trying not to kindle a dispute, though. "We
have agreed to disagree," he said.
But on Thursday, in his first news conference since the election, Mr.
Harper took issue with Mr. Wilkins, perhaps in part to show Canadians
that he would not veer far from Canada's traditional foreign policy of
pointed independence from the United States.
American diplomats said that Mr. Wilkins had stated nothing more than
an old policy in answering a student's question. They said he did not
criticize a plan Mr. Harper announced during the campaign to build and
deploy three new armed heavy icebreaking ships and construct a
deep-water port in the Arctic territorial capital, Iqaluit.
Differences between Canada and the United States over the Arctic have
rarely surfaced in a public dispute, and leaders of both countries have
preferred to cooperate on Arctic research and defense.
But recently, the Arctic has become increasingly important because of
climate change. With Arctic ice rapidly thinning, commercial navigation
and tourism boats are making northern passages with increasing
frequency. That has obliged Canada to begin planning security measures
to protect waterways from smugglers and to prepare for the possibility
of accidents and oil spills.
The United States and Canada also have conflicting claims in the
Beaufort Sea, in an area that is thought to have oil and natural gas
reserves. Denmark and Canada have conflicting claims over another site,
Hans Island, off Greenland's coast, in an area with a rich fishery.
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