Politics not to interfere with Arctic shelf issues - Chilingarov

TROMSO, Norway, January 21 /TASS/. A decision on who has the right to the Arctic shelf should be made on the basis of scientific research data rather than on political considerations, Artur Chilingarov, the Russian president’s special representative for international cooperation in the Arctic and the Antarctic, said in an exclusive interview with TASS on Tuesday. According to the Russian Arctic and Antarctic explorer, the United Nations should not take account of political considerations when it is going to consider the requests of Denmark, Canada, Russia and the United States to expand the continental shelf borders of their countries into the Arctic. “Scientific evidence can be the only criteria and proof that Russia, just like Denmark, is attached to these territories. We hope that politics will not interfere in the solution of this process. A professional business assessment is the only thing that can matter. Russia has done everything to prove that its continental shelf is attached to the territory of the Arctic shelf,” Chilingarov said commenting on Russia’s yet to be filed request to an extra 1.2 million square meters in the Arctic Ocean which it is going to submit to the United Nations in spring this year. Canada and Denmark filed similar requests to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in 2014. Chilingarov attended the 9th Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromso that had assembled 1,400 delegates from 34 countries. Read more