WASHINGTON, August 23. /TASS/. In early September, member states of the Arctic Forum plan to hold a large-scale search and rescue exercise in the Denmark Strait, separating Greenland and Iceland, a spokesman for the US Coast Guard told TASS on Tuesday.
"There is an upcoming full-scale maritime exercise scheduled for 4-8 September in the Denmark Strait near Reykjavik, Iceland," said LCDR Dave French, Chief of Media Relations, US Coast Guard.
"The U.S. Coast Guard is sending one of our cutters to participate in the exercise," he said, adding that further requests should be forwarded to the Finnish Border Guard, the agency that assumed the Arctic Coast Guard Forum’s biennial rotating presidency in March.
The forum lists eight states members of the Arctic Council - Denmark, Iceland, Canada, Norway, Russia, the United States, Finland and Sweden.
The decision to hold a search and rescue exercise in the Denmark Strait was made during the forum’s third meeting in Boston in March. Vice-Admiral Gennady Medvedev, deputy chief, Border Guard/chief, Coast Guard Department, Federal Security Service, represented Russia at the talks.
After the meeting, the participants issued a joint statement on the adopting of "the doctrine, tactics, procedures and information sharing protocols" for "combined operations in the Arctic" and maritime search and rescue operations in the region.
A joint statement aimed at working out a long-term strategic cooperation plan was signed at the previous forum in June 2016.