Denmark's government in the night from Saturday to Sunday sent off a naval expedition to the North Pole to collect scientific data to back its territorial claims in the Arctic, DR radio reported on Sunday, according to DPA. According to DR radio, the icebreaker Oden left the harbour of the northern Norwegian town Troms for the North Pole in the early hours of the morning. Some 45 scientists from Denmark and Sweden are to take seismographic measurements over the next four weeks to prove Copenhagen's claim that the continental base of the pole is connected to the semiautonomous Scandinavian territory of the isle of Greenland. The expedition had already been planned for a while and started a week after Russian scientists anchored their national flag more than 4,000 metres deep on the bottom of the sea to support Moscow's claims to the territory. Copenhagen's Science Minister Helge Sander called the Russian act a "provocation," and said Denmark would present its own data to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea by 2014 at the latest.
