Denmark Invades Canada

ik - guys, I mean it. I was only kidding!!

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - A Danish navy ship was heading Thursday toward a small wind-swept island off northwestern Greenland that is at the centre of a diplomatic spat with Canada.

The Arctic patrol cutter Tulugaq will attempt to reach the 1.3-square-kilometre Hans Island, which is claimed by both countries, in late August if the ice permits, navy spokesman Alex Jensen said.

"The journey is part of the routine tasks that we do and that is to inspect Danish waters and uphold Danish sovereignty," Jensen said.

In 1973, Canada and Denmark drew a border down the inhospitable Nares Strait halfway between Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, and Canada's Ellesmere Island.

But the countries decided that sovereignty over Hans Island, roughly 1,100 kilometres south of the North Pole, and others in the Arctic region would be determined later.

Last month, Denmark sent a letter to Canadian Ambassador Fredericka Gregory, protesting that Canada's Defence Minister Bill Graham set foot on the island a few weeks earlier without giving the Danish government advance notice of his visit.

"If we manage to reach the island, we will hoist a new Danish flag. We're trying to change the flags as often as possible because they are quickly torn apart by the strong winds," Jensen said by telephone from the Danish navy base on Greenland's west coast.

"As it looks now, the ice situation may not allow us to reach the island. But we will try to get as far north as possible," he said. Danish navy ships have only been able to visit the island three times since 1988 because of the thick Arctic ice around it.

Using ships and dogsleds, the Danish navy patrols Greenland's roughly 40,000-kilometre-long coastline, equal to the length of the equator.