Nations stake out Antarctica territory

Troll Station, Antarctica: Nations claiming parts of Antarctica are quietly staking out rights to the seabed, in stark contrast to the North Pole where Russia ostentatiously planted a flag to back its claim.

"We have a vessel making seismic surveys of the continental shelf," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the Troll research station, 250km inland in a part of Antarctica claimed by Oslo.

Interested countries are tiptoeing around the question of who owns the Antarctic seabed, and potential deposits of oil and gas, fearing it could open the floodgates to counter-claims or undermine a treaty protecting the continent as a nature reserve.

Unlike the Arctic, which is open to competition for minerals, Antarctica is set aside forever for peaceful purposes and scientific research under a 1959 treaty that was a big success of the Cold War.

Treaty

Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New Zealand and Norway - all close to Antarctica or with historical ties - made claims before the treaty took effect. Moscow and Washington did not make claims but reserved the right to do so. Norway's interests go back almost a century - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was first to reach the South Pole in 1911, before Briton Robert Falcon Scott.

However, the Antarctic Treaty is being tested by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has set a deadline of May 2009 for most coastal states to map their continental shelves, aiming to define rights to seabed areas.

Johannes Huber, head of the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat in Buenos Aires, told Reuters: "Under the Antarctic Treaty you cannot increase your claim, you cannot make new claims."