ARCTIC POWDER KEG UNHAPPY STRATEGIC STATUS OF SPITSBERGEN RENEWED

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34045, 8 January 1976, Page 8

ARCTIC POWDER KEG UNHAPPY STRATEGIC STATUS OF SPITSBERGEN RENEWED

Bu

MARK ARNOLD-FORSTER

in Oslo for the "Ouardian )

Reprinted bu arrangement

After discreet bargaining in Oslo the Russians and the Norwegian-., seem to have defused successfully a potentially ominous conflict between East and West over Spitsbergen. At least for the time being Oil and the growth of the Soviet Navy have combined to restore to that frozen Norwegian island the unhappy strategic status it enjoyed in the late 1940 s as the scene of a possible major quarrel between ’ • United States and the Soviet Union.

To the Russians the future of Spitsbergen (as the Anglo-Saxons call Svalbard) is more important now than it was then and for two main reasons. The first is, that the Russians now possess the second most powerful fleet in the world, that most of the fleet’s effective striking forces, including its nuclear-missile-carrying submarines, are based on the Kola Peninsula in the Ba- • rents Sea. and that the channel from the Barents Sea to; the North Atlantic, the United States, and Europe passes between N.A.T.O. territory in Northern Norway and Spitsbergen. The Spitsbergen Channel: now matters much more to the Russians than it did because their fleet is bigger.; The width of the channel in' winter is the same as the distance between France and Brighton. The second reason for Spitsbergen’s enhanced importance is that there probably is oil to be found around it and in the Barents (Sea to the east. It is impossible for either country to exploit the oil yet. The; water is deep; the Arctic! seas are unforgiving; and darkness lasts a long time in latitude 78deg. North. But both governments foresee an advance in the state of the oil-prospectors' art — an advance which I could make the continental 'shelf round Spitsbergen and • the other Norwegian pos- ; session, Bear Island, as well •as the Barents Sea itself, into a profitable prospecting ■ground. Soviet claim | The negotiations in Oslo | — described by Norway’s i Foreign Minister, Knut Fry(denlund, as having been ■ objective and friendly — dealt not so much with the problem of Spitsbergen’s continental shelf, and w’hether it is Norwegian, as with the sea frontier in the Barents Sea between Norjway and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had so • far claimed that the division • between Soviet and Norwegian waters should run (straight north to rhe Pole (from the Soviet-Norwegian [land frontier at the mouth •of the Jakobs River.

Norway had been holding out for a crooked dividing line passing halfway between Norwegian territory to the west and in Bear Island and Soviet territory tn Novaya Zemlaya. The negotiations ended amicably but inconclusively and will be resumed next year. There remains the strategic question and that of the continental shelf, both of which involve other countries as well. Both questions, also, have been sadlybedevilled by the Spitsbergen Treaty of 1920 which made Spitsbergen Norwegian territory but which insists d that it should be demilitarised and that all signatories to the treaty should have equal rights to prospect for minerals in Spitsbergen. Thirty years go, as the Second World War ended, the Russians sought to annul the provision about demilitarisation. In April 1945. while the war was still being fought, the Norwegian

and Soviet Governments.. allies against Hitler, pub-1 lished a statement envisaging a joint military presence on Spitsbergen. This would have meant revising the Spitsbergen Treats. Treaty problem To change the treaty would have involved the consent of Denmark. France, Great Britain. Italy. the Netherlands. Sweden. Australia, Canada. New Zealand. India. South Africa. the United States, and — embarrassingly while the war was on — Italy and Japan. There was no immediate reaction from a preoccupied! United States. But on July; 13. with the war in Europe won and the war in the Pacific still in progress, the State Department said firmlv ' that “it will be necessary to bear in mind the relationship of the possible Soviet acquisition of bases in the, Spitsbergen Archipelago. I Bornholm (a Danish island' in the Baltic), and Jan Mayen (a Norwegian one in the Arctic Sea) ... to the possible acquisition of United States bases in Ice-1 land and Greenland." The United States sub-' sequently acquired its bases — at Thule in Greenland and Keflavik in Iceland —•

but the Soviet Union never 'got Bornholm. Jan Ma • or Spitsbergen The Russians did. ho, ever, acquire a foothold n Spitsbergen as they h<d always been entitled to •. ■• under the treaty of 1920. Alone among the non-N vvegian signatories tin So. vie: Union has exercised - mineral rights bv min. g coal at Barentsburg and P ■ ramiden The Norwegians mine . • at Longy earbyen — the island’s administrative <.ap.ta’ named after an intrepid American prospector. John Munro Longyear About 1000 Norwegians extract rathmore coal than about 2500 Russians with whom they share a new al -tFe-v e., round Norwegian-run ait field. But the people. Norwegian and Russian. are out numbered bv 9000 reindeer and an uncounted but I strictly preserved population •of polar bears. Neither the men. the reindeer, nor the bears have seen the sun since October 27. and will not see it again until February 16. The temperature now is about minus 35C. and iunlikelv to rise above zero before’.lune. Spitsbergen is an important place, but unwelcoming