FOG BLOG CANADA NEWS LOG: PEACEFUL RESOLUTION TO HANS ISLAND BETWEEN CANADA AND DENMARK!

Ukraine war brings peace — between Canada and Denmark TORONTO — It’s a barren and inhospitable rock plopped in a frigid channel in the Arctic. One geologist who visited characterized it as “not a very exciting island.” A Canadian legal analyst once tried to point it out on a map in a presentation he had prepared for lawmakers but conceded that its size made it “very difficult to see.” “We don’t have a big blowup picture to show you,” he said.

Nevertheless, for some five decades, Canada and Denmark have squabbled — mostly, but not always, politely — over the not-very-exciting Hans Island, a 0.5-square-mile mass in the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait that’s home to neither vegetation nor wildlife. The craggy outcropping — Tartupaluk in Inuit — lies between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Now, at long last, there’s rapprochement in the dispute dubbed the “Flag war” or “Whisky war.”

Officials from both countries, as well as Greenland, signed an agreement on Tuesday to resolve the long-standing fracas — the last remaining disagreement over a land border in the Arctic — with the Solomonic solution of dividing the island in two. Denmark gets about 60 percent of the island; Canada gets the rest. “I think it was the friendliest of all wars,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, told reporters in Ottawa. “I’m happy to see that we’re resolving it with friends, partners and allies. … It’s a win-win-win.” Both Canada and Denmark cast the “historic” agreement as an example of how border disputes can be resolved peacefully, without warfare or bitter legal wrangling, at a time when the rules-based international order is under strain — a reference in part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“As we stand here today, we see gross violation of international rules unfold in another part of the world,” said Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s foreign minister. “In contrast, we have demonstrated how long-standing international disputes can be resolved peacefully and playing by the rules.”

The dispute dates back to 1973, when Canadian and Danish diplomats were drawing up a maritime boundary in the Arctic. The line cut straight through Hans Island. The diplomats left the question of what to do about it unresolved.