Cold Water Confrontation

It seemed a strange way for allies to behave. Britain, a member of NATO, dispatched three gunships into what Iceland, a fellow NATO member, regards as its own territorial waters. Iceland retaliated by issuing a strongly worded protest accusing its ally of aggression, recalling its ambassador for consultations, and threatening to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council.

The squabble between the two seafaring neighbors was the latest episode in a long-running argument over valuable fishing rights in the cold waters near the Arctic Circle. For the third time since World War II, Iceland and Britain are near blows in what citizens of both nations call the cod war.

The current round of quarreling started last September, when Iceland unilaterally extended its sovereignty from twelve to 50 miles out to sea, and declared the area off limits to foreign trawlers. If left unchallenged, Iceland's declaration could hurt the British economy, which suffers from rising food prices. Last year Britain caught $62 million worth of cod in waters off Iceland--21 % of its total fish catch.

London immediately rejected Iceland's right to extend its sovereignty unilaterally. British trawlers continued to cast their nets up to twelve miles from the Icelandic coast. In response, Icelandic gunboats cut the warps and traps of British trawlers. Two weeks ago, London claims, a gunboat called Tyr (god of war and victory) attempted to board the trawler Lord Alexander and fired two warning shots across its bow.

Iceland denies that any such incident took place. Nonetheless, the British government ordered the Royal Navy frigates HMS Plymouth, Cleopatra and Jupiter to accompany the British fishing trawlers. All are armed with missiles and carry torpedo-bearing helicopters. Said Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Joseph Godber: "The Navy is not going to stand by and see our trawlers chivied by Icelandic gunboats."

Privately, some British officials were less than jubilant about the navy's show of force, which one Whitehall aide called a "painful inevitability." For one thing, it drastically reversed the policy of conciliation that London had been pursuing since September. Britain had suggested taking the dispute to the International Court of Justice or to the 14-member North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission. It also volunteered to reduce its annual catch by about 30%--to 145,000 tons. For another, the move was bound to antagonize Iceland's left-leaning government, which already had doubts about letting British and other NATO planes use Keflavik air base.

Iceland is not much interested in any interim negotiations with Britain.

It wants to take the dispute before next year's U.N.-sponsored Conference on the Law of the Sea, in Santiago, Chile, where a host of Third World nations will undoubtedly back its claim. Meanwhile, Iceland insists that it must protect its fisheries, which are its sole natural resource, and last year accounted for 80% of its exports. Many Icelanders fear that the mammoth floating fish-factories of the large industrial nations, which suck in everything but the smallest plankton from the sea, will decimate Iceland's seabed if allowed to continue coming as close as twelve miles to its shore. Says Loftur Juliusson, secretary of the Icelandic skipper and mates union: "We are like a single tree in the middle of the North Atlantic that has only a single root. We want to keep that root to ourselves."

World Protest. Iceland has a good chance of doing just that--at least if the results of the two previous cod wars are any indication. Two decades ago, when Iceland expanded its fishing limits from three to four miles, Britain imposed economic sanctions, but the unfavorable publicity it received for trying to bully a powerless little nation eventually forced it to back down.

It was the same story in 1958, when Iceland unilaterally moved its territorial limits out to twelve miles.

Eyeing these precedents, British officials privately admit that they have no hope of pushing Iceland back to the twelve-mile limit, but merely want to force it back to the conference table. So far that is not working. Instead of moving toward negotiations, Iceland last week barred British military planes from Keflavik. In Reykjavik, youthful demonstrators smashed the windows of the British embassy building after attending a rally to protest British aggression. Escalation of the cod war could create problems for NATO. Iceland's strategic position makes it a key link in Western monitoring of Soviet submarine movement. Disturbingly, Icelanders have already noted that, while their NATO allies violate the 50-mile boundary, Eastern European and Soviet ships respect it.

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