US approves cooperation with all Arctic countries
© RIA Novosti. Natalya Seliverstova

US approves cooperation with all Arctic countries

The United States is positive about further cooperation with all Arctic nations within the Arctic Council, especially as concerns climate change, Rossiya Segodnya reports US President Barack Obama as saying. 

 "The United States is, of course, an Arctic nation… it is proud to chair the Arctic Council for the next two years…  We are eager to work with [Arctic] nations on the unique opportunities that the Arctic presents and the unique challenges that it faces.  We are not going to — any of us — be able to solve these challenges by ourselves.  We can only solve them together," Obama said at the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience, or GLACIER, which is taking place in Anchorage, Alaska.

The Arctic Council was established in 1996 at Finland's initiative, and its members are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Participants in the conference also include representatives from the observer states: China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and others.