Medvedev wants Russia to set Arctic seabed borders

An undated handout photo from the Center for Northern Studies shows the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf disintegrating. The incredibly rapid rate at which Canada's Arctic ice shelves are disappearing is an early indicator of the ''very substantial changes'' that global warming will impose on all mankind, a top scientist said on September 3, 2008.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered his officials on Wednesday to draft a law marking out Russia's borders in the Arctic, where it is competing with the West for control of vast energy resources.

Medvedev did not specify where the borders should lie but Russia has claimed large swathes of territory and any unilateral action would breach a deal between the five Arctic Sea countries to let the United Nations rule on their rival claims.

"We must finalize and adopt a federal law on the southern border of Russia's Arctic zone," Medvedev said in televised remarks to his Security Council.

"It is our duty to our direct descendants. We have to ensure the long-term national interests of Russia in the Arctic," he said.

The U.N. has asked Arctic states to submit their territorial claims for consideration by May 2009. But Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council, said Medvedev wanted the draft law on the border ready by December this year.

International law states the five countries which control the Arctic coastline -- Canada, Russia, the United States, Norway and Denmark via Greenland -- are allowed a 320 km (200 miles) economic zone north of their shores.

But these rules have created a tangle of claims and rivalries over the Arctic -- potentially a very valuable prize.

Around 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its undiscovered gas lies under the Arctic seabed, a study by U.S. Geological Survey said in July.

Global warming is melting the Arctic icecap so fast that scientists have said it could be free of ice during the summer months within decades, easing access for oil and mineral exploration.

"The Arctic for Russia holds great strategic meaning. This region is directly linked to meeting the long-term challenges of the country and its competitiveness in global markets," Medvedev told the Security Council.

Underlining Russia's interest in the Arctic, the council last week met -- without Medvedev -- on a desolate Arctic island. The body normally only meets in Moscow.

Mineral and energy exports have enriched Russia over the last decade allowing it to take an increasingly assertive stance in foreign policy. It has been trying to re-claim sphere of influence lost since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Some analysts say its military action in Georgia last month, which Russia says was in response to a Georgian attack on the separatist South Ossetia region, fits in with this strategy.

Russia has claimed jurisdiction over most of the Arctic because it says an underwater ridge links Siberia to the seabed that runs underneath the North Pole.

Last year a Russian mini-submarine dived to this seabed and symbolically planted a Russian flag to claim the Arctic.

But at a meeting in Greenland in May Russia and the other countries with Arctic coastlines agreed the U.N. would decide how to settle territorial claims in the region.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)

(Writing by James Kilner; Editing by Matthew Jones)