OTTAWA — Norway played down on Monday the chances of an imminent agreement with Russia on settling a decades-long dispute over a region of the Barents Sea that could be rich in natural gas and oil.
Russia said last December that a deal was possible this year to end a disagreement dating back to the early 1980s, when the Soviet Union began drilling in the so-called gray zone of the Barents Sea. It stopped after Oslo objected.
“Every day we get one day closer to an agreement, but we’re not going to be pushed by artificial timelines. We’re going to do the work it takes to get to a balanced agreement,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said.
(Reuters)
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