Arctic expedition team return home after flag-planting
1.
Aeroplane taxiing across runway
2.
People waiting
3.
Mid shot Expedition leader
Artur Chilingarov comes out of a plane holding
Russian flag
4. Pan from aeroplane to officials
5.
Chilingarov tasting traditional welcoming food of bread and salt
6. Members of the expedition and media
7. Wide of media
8. Members of the expedition walk out
9. Wide of members of the expedition surrounded by media
10. SOUNDBITE: (
Russian) Artur Chilingarov,
Head of the Expedition and
State Duma deputy:
"People should get used to the fact that we were the first. When the
Americans went to the moon we didn't say anything. And Arctic has always been ours and the fact that we are there first is great.
It's great and of course it all depended on the organisation of this unique and historic expedition."
11. Set up of
Michael Dowell,
Australian member of the expedition
12. SOUNDBITE: (
English) Michael McDowell, Australian explorer:
"This expedition has been in the planning stages for the last nine years. This has been worked on. So this is not something that has been put together this year to make a show, a circus at the
North Pole. The main aim of this expedition always was and was this year exploration and science. So it was human achievement, human history. And for the americans and the canadians as Artur said, they can do the same."
13. Chilingarov holding photograph of Russian flag planted on Arctic seabed
STORYLINE:
Members of an expedition that descended to the ocean floor beneath the North Pole returned to
Moscow on Tuesday.
Last Thursday two deep-diving Russian miniature submarines descended more than two and a half miles (4 kilometres) to the seabed.
In a perilous project mixing science, exploration and the scramble for potential oil and gas fields, crews of the
MIR 1 and MIR 2 carried out what Russian authorities called the first dive to the ocean floor at
Earth's northernmost
point.
Expedition leader and famed polar scientist Artur Chilingarov, who was aboard the MIR 1 three-person sub, claimed on his return that the Arctic had always belonged to
Russia.
''The fact that we are there first is great. It's great and of course it all depended on the organisation of this unique and historic expedition."
Reaction from other Arctic nations to Russia's flag-planting has been unequivocally negative, even belittling.
Canada's foreign minister suggested that Russia was operating under five-century-old rules of imperial conquerors.
The United States equated the legal significance of the Russian flag on the ocean floor to a bed sheet.
Australian expedition member
Michael McDowell was however keen to emphasise the scientific nature of the voyage.
"The main aim of this expedition always was and was this year exploration and science. So it was human achievement, human history."
During the dive a titanium capsule containing the nation's flag was dropped to the bottom, symbolically claiming almost half of the planet's northern polar region for Moscow.
In
December 2001, Moscow claimed that that the the
Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile (1,995-kilometre) underwater mountain range that crosses the polar region, was an extension of the
Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia's continental shelf under international law.
The United Nations rejected Moscow's application, citing lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009.
The ridge was discovered by the
Soviets in 1948 and named after a famed
18th-century Russian scientist,
Mikhail Lomonosov.
Little is known about the ocean floor near the pole, but by some estimates it could contain vast oil and gas deposits.
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