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Americans Launch Another Arctic Expedition
U.S. authorities have announced the beginning of a new expedition to the Arctic that is intended to prove America's right to the plateau in the northern part of the Sea of Chukotka, 500 miles from the Alaskan shore. The Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, which set sail a week ago, will pick up 20 scientists in northern Alaska and head into the Sea of Chukotka.
Larry Mayer, one of the expedition leaders, stated that the expedition has been in preparation for three years, and is not a response to Russia's recent activity's in the Arctic. The expedition will take sonar measurements of the northern floor of the Sea of Chukotka and create a map of it.
Behind the scientific goals lies the clear hope of claiming the area for the United States under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has stated that the expedition is dedicated to the country's economic power and national security. That also explains the presence of U.S. State Department representatives on the expedition along with experts from the University of New Hampshire and the National Science Foundation.
The State Department is leading the special interagency group that has been studying the ocean floor for the last three years. That group picked up the pace of its activities last December on the orders of the Bush administration, but has preferred to work quietly until recently. Canada and Denmark have also become more vocal in their Arctic claims since the Russian Arctic 2007 expedition.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 15, 2007
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