Britian's plan to submit a claim to the United Nations to extend its Antarctic territory by a million square km has infuriated green groups and South American nations.

The claim is one of five territorial requests planned by Britain ahead of a May 2009 deadline and covers a vast area of the seabed around British Antarctica near the south pole, a spokeswoman said.

"We are one of many coastal states who are submitting various claims," she told Reuters.

She said the four other claims would be for Atlantic seabed territory around South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, around Ascension Island, near the Bay of Biscay in the south-west Atlantic, and in the Hatton-Rockall basin off Scotland's coast.

Environmental groups condemned the British designs on vast tracts of the seabed off the coast of Antarctica, with Greenpeace and WWF expressing dismay that the Foreign Office was contemplating possible oil, gas and mineral exploration in the region.

The Guardian newspaper revealed that the Foreign Office was preparing to submit a rights claim to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf (CLCS) for 1 million sq km of seabed off the coast of the British Antarctic Territory.

Any claim, it is alleged, could threaten the stability of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which froze territorial disputes on the world's least explored continent. Drilling for oil or gas would disrupt its fragile marine ecology, experts fear.

Simon Walmsley, head of WWF-UK's marine program, insisted: "There should be no oil or gas exploitation in Antarctica. It's such a fragile habitat. Some of the sea creatures there are killed by a rise in temperature of merely 1.1 C. It would be a body blow for the whole region."

"I question whether the government is serious enough to go through with this claim. It's something a lot of countries are doing as they have a deadline (of May 2009) for their claims. In no way would we support oil or gas exploration in Antarctica."

Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace UK's climate change campaign manager, called the move "hugely irresponsible". He said: "It's astonishing that the government is leading the international charge on climate change but also leading the charge for an oil rush ... Antarctica is the last great wilderness and the poles are going to get the hardest hit by climate change. (This move) is wrong-headed. "

Chile and Argentina, which claim Antarctic territories which overlap the British Antarctic Territory, could also submit claims for similar seabed areas.

The Chilean and Argentinian embassies in London did not comment on Wednesday. However, the director of Chile's Antarctic Institute, Jos Retamales Espinoza, said he was sure his government would look into the issue.

Agencies

(China Daily 10/19/2007 page10)