60 



should be. Is that your assessment, and are there things that per- 

 haps we could do to help prod that along? 



Ambassador COLSON. I do not have that assessment. I do not 

 have that knowledge. If you are speaking of our people and our 

 naval officers and the Defense Department, I think there has been 

 good cooperation within the interagency community. 



I know that Deputy Secretary Talbot talked to former Deputy 

 Secretary Perry about this at an earlier date to try to advance the 

 cooperation with Norway and to bring our military into this, be- 

 cause we did feel that working sort of through the normal State 

 Department to foreign ministry channels was not the right way to 

 accomplish what we needed to accomplish with the Russian mili- 

 tary. I think the kinds of military to military contacts that we are 

 now having are essential and it is something that the Department 

 of State certainly supports. 



Mr. Weldon. So you are not aware of any opposition from the 

 U.S. Navy's naval reactors program? 



Ambassador CoLSON. I am not aware of any, no, sir. 



Mr. Weldon. That is a question I will ask the other panelists. 

 I am giving them a heads-up in case they want to think about their 

 answer prior to that question being asked. 



I will now turn to my good friend from Guam, Mr. Underwood. 



Mr. Underwood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Ambassador, I was struck by the comment, I guess, that you 

 said that some of the attention given to the Arctic is somewhat of 

 a fad. Given the nature of the earlier panel, perhaps you could give 

 me some reason to believe that it is a fad. How does this compare 

 in terms of the dangers overall worldwide and what would lead you 

 to make such a comment, at the risk of wanting the Pacific to be 

 a fad. 



Ambassador COLSON. Perhaps the use of the word "fad" was un- 

 fortunate, but I do find that oftentimes in international activities, 

 there will become an issue that will be popular and it will become 

 the source of funding for lots of meetings but not for any particular 

 work. 



I think that that is what we are finding today in many respects 

 in the Arctic, that some government, some agency is interested in 

 the Arctic. It is sort of a new issue. It was an issue that during 

 the cold war we did not talk about Arctic cooperation because it 

 really did not exist. Now that has broken down and there are lots 

 of environmental groups, there are a lot of other countries inter- 

 ested in things Arctic. 



My point was simply that we have to guard against a prolifera- 

 tion of nonproductive initiatives. We can get bogged down very eas- 

 ily with the limited resources that we have simply going off to 

 meetings, flying in airplanes to talk about Arctic things and not 

 getting anything done. It is one of these issues where just about 

 every government has their own Arctic initiative and I think we 

 have to guard against that and focus in and try to use our re- 

 sources wisely and efficiently, and that sometimes means saying no 

 to simply the interest in having meetings or forums and things like 

 that. 



Mr. Underwood. But it is not meant to delimit the impact or the 

 presentation of the severity of the situation? 



