Axworthy claims progress in circumpolar talks
Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy wants to improve trade between Nunavut and Greenland, and he says his department is committed to lobbying for changes to the Marine Mammals Protection Act.
MONTREAL — Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy said this week that he’s made some progress tackling some of the most urgent economic and environmental issues facing the Arctic.
Axworthy spent last week traveling to Greenland, Iceland and Finland to attend meetings with Nordic and European Union leaders.
“The purpose is to try to work on collaboration on issues that affect Northerners,” Axworthy told reporters at a teleconference from Helsinki, Finland.
Axworthy said he discussed the elimination of trade barriers and building up a better trade and transportation corridor between Nunavut and Greenland with Greenland Premier Jonathan Modzfeldt and Denmark’s economic minister this week.
“One proposal that we thought was very attractive is that we bring to the new negotiations [at the World Trade Organization] an aboriginal trading network so that they can get a particular special treatment,” Axworthy said.
This network would seek to trade items that currently are either prohibited or subject to tariff regulations.
Axworthy said that he hadn’t had time to bounce the idea off the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development or the Nunavut government.
Axworthy said that he gave a commitment that Canada would work on amending the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, a law that prevents trade in seal and other marine mammal products, even between aboriginal peoples.
“I told them that we would put the staff from our embassy in Washington, on a pretty high level, to see what we can do,” Axworthy said .
The creation of a new air link to Winnipeg from Iceland via Iceland’s airline, Icelandair, was also on the agenda.
During his meetings, Axworthy said that he sensed a willingness to strike a strong UN protocol on trans-boundary pollution and contaminants when discussions start up again in Geneva in September.
“I’ve been using my ‘human security’ agenda as a way of demonstrating a need particularly in the very tough evidence that’s coming up about the way that contaminants are collecting in Arctic waters and entering food chains and affecting the health of northern residents,” said Axworthy.
“I think that we’re getting a quite strong resonance on the fact that we have to work together to tackle problems such as that.”
(0) Comments