Posted on 03/31/2004 12:24:00 PM PST by mvpel
Canada may be pulling back from overseas military commitments, but is planning to "flex its muscles" with an exercise on home soil by sending a warship, a squadron of helicopters and 200 troops to the high Arctic this summer.
News of the operation was reported in Saturday's edition of The National Post.
The military says the three-week long exercise has nothing to do with a brewing territorial dispute with Denmark over the ownership of a tiny island between Ellesesmere Island and Greenland.
The operation, code-mamed Narwhal, is the first time the military will have a joint naval, air and land force operating so far north.
Colonel Norris Pettis, commander of the Canadian Forces northern area, told The National Post that the operation is about "sending a message that this land is important to us...that we can put troops, and aircraft and ships, on the ground to respond to whatever we might be called upon to deal with."
Pettis said the "robust" military presence is a sign that Canada is "flexing our muscles" in the Arctic.
The Danish ambassador to Canada, Svend Roed Nielsen, has offered to negotiate with Canadian diplomats about the fate of Hans Island, a three-kilometre-long stretch of rock and ice in the Nares Strait.
Both countries claim ownership of the barren and uninhabited island.
"As far as Canada-Danish relations are concerned we have tried to keep this low-key [but] we have agreed to disagree," Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron told the Post.
A Danish warship sailed past Hans Island in 2002 and a group of soldiers disembarked and reportedly hoisted the Danish flag, an act Canada claimed was a violation of its sovereignty.
Canada has launched a five-year plan to increase its military presence throughout the Arctic, including satellite surveillance and far-reaching patrols of soldiers on snowmobiles.
Ellesmere Island, 82,119 sq mi (212,688 sq km), c.500 mi (800 km) long, in the Arctic Ocean, N Nunavut Territory, Canada; second largest and northernmost island of the Arctic Archipelago. It is separated from NW Greenland by a narrow passage. The island's coast is indented by deep fjords. The interior plateau rises more than 2,000 ft (610 m) above sea level; the United States Ranges, in the north, are c.11,000 ft (3,350 m) high. An ice cap covers most of the island's east side. In snow-free areas vegetation supports large herds of musk oxen. There are scientific stations and some Inuit (Eskimo) settlements on the island. First sighted by the British explorer William Baffin in 1616, Ellesmere Island was explored in the latter half of the 19th cent. Since the 1950s the island has been the site of many glaciological, geological, and geographical expeditions.
I would have guessed a curling contest, or is that the same thing?
That could degenerate into a p!@#$%^ contest fairly quick.
LOL, no wonder why an Australian FRer assure me that even under a Labor government with as anti-American as Mark Latham, Australia still won't be like Canada as is now. LOL
All of a sudden I'm hungry
That amply illustrates the spirit of Canada cicra 2004 under Prime Minister Paul Martin. Sir Authur Currie must be rolling in his grave when he sees what his generation's great-great-grandchildren are doing.
Absolutely without a doubt. There is no other logical reason to be arguing over "a three-kilometre-long stretch of rock and ice in the Nares Strait". It's the same reason China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and whoever else fight over reefs in the South China Sea. Once an island is yours, you can claim an Economic Exclusion Zone.
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