Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Playing Capture the Flag
Canada and Denmark have a dispute over Hans Island, which about one kilometer in diameter and is located between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Denmark's Greenland. Both countries claim sovereignty over the island.
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Canadian soldiers captured two Danish flags during their recent mission to Hans Island as a demonstration of Canada's sovereignty over the barren Arctic rock, according to previously classified military documents.When I was a Boy Scout, playing "Capture the Flag" was great sport. But this exercise by the Canadian military seems not to be much more serious than what my troop members and I did more than 40 years ago.
The flags were first taken to a Canadian military base in Yellowknife and then at least one of them was hand-delivered to Denmark's ambassador in Ottawa three weeks later. The next day, the ambassador personally repatriated it to Copenhagen, according to Danish officials.
"The first foreign items to be located on Hans Island were two Danish flags. One flag was flying on a flagpole and the other was located in a barrel near the flagpole," says a post-mission report obtained by the National Post under the Access to Information Act.
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// posted by Tex the Pontificator @ 11/09/2005 10:28:00 PM 
