French seabed demands trigger diplomatic row

PARIS - A couple of specks of land 25km off the coast of Newfoundland, battered by Atlantic winds and rain, have brought France and Canada on to collision course.

The last remnant of a North American empire known as "New France", the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, are largely unknown except for their postage stamps, a unique time zone and a dialect of French tinged by ancient Norman. They are also the only place in North America where the euro is the official currency.

The obscure outposts have now sparked a diplomatic row.

France told the United Nations it is claiming a swathe of the seabed up to 350 nautical miles from its "overseas collectivity". It is eyeing a chunk of the northwestern Atlantic floor believed to hold about 600 million barrels of oil.

Canada, already piqued by Russia's claim to mineral and hydrocarbon-rich seabed in the Arctic, has growled its displeasure.

"Canada will take all necessary measures to defend and protect its rights with respect to its continental shelf," Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has warned.

The claim was filed on May 8 to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, set up to implement the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

"Our goal is to reach a mutually advantageous management with Canada of joint interests in this area," deputy foreign ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneux said in Paris.

He added: "Franco-Canadian cooperation obviously is fundamental. Whether it's in fisheries, sea or air transport, oil prospection, solutions have to be found jointly."

States have a right to claim seabed up to 200 nautical miles from their coasts, but this can be extended up to 350 nautical miles if a country can prove the sea floor is part of the continental shelf - the maritime floor that slopes from the coast.

The commission vets the legitimacy of claims and issues rulings that, while non-binding, have a powerful impact on negotiations or arbitration.

France has already lost a previous skirmish with Canada over the zone around St Pierre and Miquelon.

In 1992, the International Court of Arbitration in New York tossed out a claim for an "exclusive economic zone" south of the islands.

Instead, it humiliatingly allotted Paris less than a fifth of what it had sought. France was given a corridor measuring just 10.5 nautical miles by 200 miles that has been dubbed "the Baguette". It also retained 12-nautical-mile territorial waters, as well as a similar zone of contiguous waters. Except for these, the territory is surrounded by Canadian waters.

The new claim has been lodged as a "letter of inten", the first stage in a years-long process that requires scientific evidence to back it up. But it runs into a Canadian counter-claim, based on the shelf extending from Sable Island, southeast of Nova Scotia.

"Canada does not recognise France's claim to any area of the continental shelf in the northwest Atlantic Ocean beyond the area set out in the arbitration decision, and Canada has made France aware of its position on several occasions, and again recently," Cannon said in March.

Representatives from St Pierre and Miquelon had lobbied the Government to initiate a claim by May 13 to meet a deadline under its accession to the Law of the Sea Convention.

The territory's population have survived on handouts since the collapse of cod fishing two decades ago, a decline that accelerated after the 1992 ruling limited local trawling to the "Baguette". .

But the timing is unfortunate, as it coincides with rising Canadian anger over Russia's step in 2007 to claim the Lomonosov Ridge as part of its continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean.

That move triggered jockeying among the other countries on the Arctic's perimeter - the United States, Denmark (through Greenland) and Norway (through the Svalbard archipelago).

OCEANS APART ON OWNERSHIP

* St Pierre and Miquelon were granted to France under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, under which France handed its Canadian empire to Britain and surrendered its land east of the Mississippi.

* Thanks to its small but numerous overseas territories, France is able to stake claims on vast areas of the seabed.

* On May 8, France also filed a "letter of intent" for claims extending from French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna. It has previously claimed for continental shelves around New Caledonia and other parts of the world.

* In 2007, New Zealand filed objections to the claims regarding New Caledonia, warning that they partly overlap a New Zealand claim on an area called Three Kings Ridge.