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Show Spitzbergen Coal Mined By Russians The coldest crossroads of the cold war are Norway's jagged Spitsbergen islands, where polar bears nose inquisitively into the only mining settlements operated by Soviet Russia on the free side of the Iron Curtain. Svalbard "land of the cold coast" is the ancient Norse name for this Arctic archipelago which became part of the Kingdom of Norway a quarter of a century i ago. Once an international no ' man's land, Svalbard has recently become a strategic question mark. It straddles potential polar air routes between Europe and North America. But under a 1920 treaty, the islands cannot be fortified, and signing nations (United States, Great Britain and its Dominions, France, Italy, Japan, the Nether- 1 lands, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia) are guaranteed continued access to any economic interests they might hold there. Today both Norway and Russia mine Spitsbergen coal. Norway is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Russia is not. Svalbard's status is somewhere some-where between. |