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Argentina contests U.K. claims to seabed

Argentina’s Foreign Minister has warned that the U.K. will be challenged over any claim to parts of the southern Atlantic seabed, and that his country will apply for sovereignty over the ocean floor around the Falkland Islands and Antarctica.

Jorge Taiana spoke after the revelation that Britain may register a claim at the U.N. which could extend its control over one million sq km of the seabed off the coast of the British Antarctic Territory.

Speaking in Rome, Mr. Taiana said Argentina was preparing studies to present to CLCS, the U.N. Commission on the limits of the continental shelf.

“This will include the area covering Argentine Antarctica, as well as the Malvinas [Falklands], South Georgia, and the South Sandwich islands, because they are part of our integral national territory. In defence of our national interest and legitimate sovereign rights we are intensely working on our presentation.”

Both the U.K. and Argentina lay claim to large areas of Antarctica, territories which overlap. Under the terms of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, territorial disputes on the icecap were “frozen”.

The news that Britain could register such a seabed claim has heightened political tensions in the region. Buenos Aires still claims the Malvinas, known to the U.K. as the Falklands, as well as South Georgia and the South Sandwich islands.

The U.K. Foreign Office did not respond to the comments of the Argentinian Foreign Minister.

But a spokeswoman said that technical and legal experts from the Foreign Office and Argentina’s foreign affairs department had met to talk about the issue. “U.K. jurisdiction ... if internationally agreed, would help protect these areas from uncontrolled environmental damage,” said the spokeswoman.

“We are absolutely committed to upholding our obligations under the Antarctic treaty.

“This isn’t a free-for-all, a secret carve-up or competitive land grab. We are engaged in a peaceful, open and long-term U.N. process to establish, by consensus under international law, an orderly regulatory regime in large areas of the oceans where none exists at present.”

She said that if the U.K. did not submit the claim to the U.N. by the deadline of May 2009, the right to do so would be lost.

The Antarctic treaty at present prohibits gas, oil and mineral exploitation in Antarctica. The Southern Ocean around the continent is icy and inhospitable, and even if the terms of the treaty were altered in future, any extraction of resources would amount to an extreme technical challenge.

This year, for example, the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, lost a remotely operated submersible in the Weddell Sea when it became trapped in an ice cavern 70 metres below the surface. The submersible, known as an autonomous underwater vehicle, was estimated to have cost £1 million to develop. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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