Countries Converge To Discuss Rights to Arctic Oil, Gas Reserves

LONDON — Five countries will meet in Greenland today to thrash out ownership of the Arctic Ocean, which could hold up to one quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and America are fighting over much of the Arctic seabed. Denmark has called them together for talks to avert a free-for-all scramble for the region's resources.

Russia angered other Arctic countries last year by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, with the mission's leader, Artur Chilingarov, declaring: "The Arctic is ours." Canada responded by increasing military patrols, as did Denmark in Greenland, its self-governing province, and America in Alaska.

The Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, and Greenland's premier, Hans Enoksen, will meet the Norwegian and Russian foreign ministers, Jonas Gahr Stoere and Sergei Lavrov, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, John Negroponte, and Canada's natural resources minister, Gary Lunn, for a two-day conference in the town of Ilulissat.