AMERICAN INTEREST IN ARCTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5285, 23 December 1946, Page 2

AMERICAN INTEREST IN ARCTIC

RUSSIAN SUSPICIONS - MOSCOW SEES THiREAT OF OFFENSIVE ACTION. MOpCOW. Growing misgivings are . manifest hex*e over what is described as an American military expansion in the Arctic. It was one thing, -Russians feel, for the United. States to* bnild' and garrison bases in the Fax: Noxth, froin the Aleutians to Iceland, so long as northern globegirdling air and sea routes had to be developed and defended in order to supply planes, arms and eqiuipmeht to the embattled Red Army. But now the war is over and LendLease has passed into history, the retention and further expansion of this network of Ai'ctic bases is believed to be fraiught wtih anti- Soviet implications. The newspaper Red Star, organ of Ministry of Armed Forces, put the matter bluntly recently when it asserted that, under guise of the defence oi the northern approaehes of the American continent from an imaginary threat, a joint American-Canadian defence committee was establishing Arctic bases for offensive operations with the obvious imp-lication that such operations could! only be directed against the Soviet Union. Such suspicions were first voiced last winter at the time of a joint American-Canadian mulskox expedition. More recently has come the news that Port Churchill is to become a testiug station for weapons and military equipment under Arctic conditions and a base for training American and Canadian troops for Arctic warfare. Fiuture of Scandinavia All this, the Russians contend, ties in with reports received from Copenhagen where Danish joumalists who recently visited Greenland deelare that Americans show no intention of~ abandoning of their wartime bases on that ice-capped island continent. Quoting these soairces the Soviet press voices much concern over Greenlands "uture status. Fx*om Greenland it is only a comoaratively short flight to Iceland. For some time now the -Soviet press -ias been reporting that the Ameri:ans appear determined to retain bases lespite what are described as indigxant protests of the local population^ From Iceland to the Scandinavian

Peninsula is within easy flying dis;ance and it is to Scandinavia, Russian xources deelare, that Americans next intend to extend their |network of itrategic bases. Russians Place Blame. r As the Russians see it these a'lleged lesigns" on Scandixxavia are dictated xy a combination of strategic and ecolomic motives and ax-e jointly backed xy American militarists who are ae;used of building up a war scare for ;heir own purposes and by "monopoly ni'cles" px*imarily interested in the lapture of woxdd xnarkets. These vroups are accused of planning to •Qnvert Sweden into a virtual Ame•ican colony. The Russians documeixt their susiicions extensively with quotations rom columns in the American press o the effect that the purpose of these Vx'ctic bases is to assux'e an Anglolaxon victory in "futui'e war." 'In his, as in most international relations, Iritain is pictured in the role of a unior partner of "American imperialsm." Canada's part in Arctic strategy is lighlighted in Soviet eyes by the reent anti-Soviet campaign in connecion with an alleged espionage ring ;hich is described here as a fabrica;on from start to finish. Soviet Arctic Mo'ves The Russians take the position that irection of American and Bxdtish xi'eign policies is passing into the • ands of "militarists" and "monopolsts," and the authoritative journal -olshevik recently pointed out in this xnnection that "now when the forelost concern in the government of eace-loving countries is the most xpid completion of the transition of conomy from wartime to peacetime roduction, in the United States of Imerica and England, there still coninues production and quantitative acxmulation of all types of arxns, 'both Lom bombs and Flying Fortresses." A Russian xnove calculated to irn--•ove the Soviet hold of Arctic water ; seen in the departure from Vladiostok of the icebreaker Nox'th Pole ith a group of expei'ts under Px'oissor Igor Maksimov, Deputy Direcxx' of the Arctic Institute. According to the Soviet Infornxation Julletin the object of the expedition he seventh -under Professor Maksi--lov, is to push through for the first hpe in history froip east to west' by !ie NorthexTX Sea route. The icebreaker expects to crash its "ay round W?rangel Island, the New .iiberian Islands and the North Land. Sjxecifically its object is to sbudy the xreas of the Chukotsk .Sea^ the East 'ibex'ian Sea and the Laptev Sea.