the Canadian Senate, on 20 February 1907, he recommended that 

 Canada should declare it had taken possession of the lands and 

 islands lying between its northern coast and the North Pole. This 

 proposal was not adopted by the Canadian Government, although 

 the Canadian sector claim has been made on other occasions. 



Strongest support for the Sector Principle has come from the 

 Soviet Union. In a decree dated 15 April 1926 the Central Execu- 

 tive Committee expressed itself in favor of the principle and laid 

 claim to lands and islands lying within the Soviet sector. Soviet 

 claims are discussed below. 



The United States has not accepted the Sector Principle or the 

 wider theory of regions of attraction. Acceptance of the theory 

 with respect to the Arctic would lend strong weight to acceptance 

 of Chilean, Argentine, and other claims in the Antarctic, for which 

 the United States has proposed some form of international control. 



CLAIMS 



Although the law governing claims to territory appears to be 

 crystallized it is not to be assumed that all applications of it are 

 equally well settled. There are certain areas where there is no 

 longer any question as to which state is sovereign. There are 

 other areas over which a state claims sovereignty but, for the 

 time being at least, other states neither object to nor acquiesce in 

 the claim. In other words, not enough time has yet elapsed since 

 the crystallization of the law to allow for a definitive application 

 of the law in all areas. Consequently, governments interested in 

 the polar regions can, with more or less reasonable certainty, ex- 

 pect to become involved in complicated diplomatic negotiations and 

 disputes, particularly with regard to areas not clearly and ex- 

 clusively within the orbit of a given country. For this reason, 

 some discussion of arctic claims should be included. 



CANADA 



There can be no doubt that the Canadian government considers 

 that Canada has sovereignty over the islands lying above its 

 northern or Arctic coast. This has been indicated by official 

 action in various ways. In 1921, for example, Canada informed 

 the Danish Government that any discoveries which Knud Ras- 

 mussen might make on his journey across Arctic America would 

 not be recognized by the Canadian Government as a basis for any 

 territorial claims by Denmark. 



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