OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada's top diplomat said Wednesday his country "regrets" and will fight France's renewed claim to the North Atlantic seabed around two tiny islands off the Canadian coast, believed to hold vast oil riches.
The French government faced intense pressure from the economically marginalized citizens of the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to stake a claim to thousands of square kilometers (miles) of seabed south of Canada's Newfoundland province.
Paris said Wednesday it would make a new claim before the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf before a May 13 deadline.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon reacted by saying his government "regrets" the French government's decision to reopen its claim to "an extended continental shelf for Saint-Pierre and Miquelon."
He noted the maritime delimitation between Canada and the French archipelago was "settled definitively" by a 1992 arbitration decision that awarded France a 12,000 square kilometer (4,600 sq. mile) economic zone around the two islands.
Populated by some 6,000 descendants of French fishermen, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon were granted to France in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. But the territory is completely surrounded by Canadian waters.
Local residents, still reeling from the cod fisheries collapse last decade, reportedly are frustrated at not being able to participate in an offshore oil boom benefiting only Newfoundland.
"Canada does not recognize 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," said Cannon.
"Canada will take all necessary measures to defend and protect its rights with respect to its continental shelf," he added.
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