John Negroponte, the US deputy secretary of state, will travel to Greenland for an international conference next week about territorial claims in the oil-rich Arctic, the State Department said Wednesday.
"Negroponte will lead the United States delegation to the Arctic Ocean Conference hosted by the Government of Denmark in Ilulissat, Greenland, May 27-29," it said in a statement.
Pointing out that Canada, Russia and Norway will send high-level delegates to the conference, it added, "Negroponte looks forward to these discussions as well as bilateral meetings with his counterparts."
The State Department did not elaborate.
Denmark's Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller has said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could not attend the conference because had to attend a conference on Iraq in Stockholm.
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are at odds over 1.2 million square kilometers (460,000 square miles) of Arctic seabed, thought to hold 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas, according to the US Geological Survey.
