ST. PETERSBURG. March 4 (Interfax-AVN) - Exercises NATO plans to hold in the north of Norway in March can be called the first steps aimed at testing plans to step up the Alliance's military presence in the Arctic region, a spokesman for the St. Petersburg Maritime Assembly told Interfax.
"The military presence of NATO and other northern countries, including Russia, will inevitably increase as large-scale projects to explore the resources of the Arctic approach," the spokesman said.
"The Arctic ice is melting, making efforts to extract underwater resources economically viable. This race could evolve into a military conflict in the remote future, if this dispute is not resolved peacefully," he said.
Addressing a conference on security in the Far North in Reykjavik at the beginning of the year, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the Alliance would boost its military presence in the Arctic region, the military expert said.
"Doubtlessly, it could mean that Russia would soon have to deal with a united opponent represented by NATO in the Arctic region," the source said.
The NATO-led Cold Response exercises will take place in Norway's northern Tromso and Norland provinces on March 16-25 and involve more than 7,000 soldiers from 13 countries. Their participants will have to settle a simulated conflict between two imaginary states - Midland and Nordland - over an oil deposit, which was discovered off Midland's coast in the 1990s. Nordland also lays claims to this oil field. It attacked Midland and occupied it. A ceasefire treaty is then signed, Nordland withdraws its forces, and NATO has to fill this vacuum of power.