The proposed area of French control, contained in a document presented to an international panel, is beyond the jurisdiction of Canada's current 320-kilometre limit, says the National Post.

The limit is just south of the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

The move could set the stage for a struggle among the islands, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia over a planned 240-kilometre expansion of offshore economic zones under new UN rules governing the Law of the Sea, observers told the newspaper.

France and Canada signed a deal this year on resource exploration in the waters immediately east of Nova Scotia and south of Newfoundland as well as Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

The agreement "applies only to territorial seas and exclusive economic zones on both sides" as established in a 1992 international ruling, the Post quotes a Foreign Affairs spokesperson as saying.

Marie-Christine Lilkoff said Canada does not recognize any French claim to a continental shelf beyond the area awarded to France in the 1992 arbitration.

An author of the report outlining France's possible claim for the portion of the continental shelf said he hopes Canada will file a counterclaim for the stretch of seabed, where "strong hydrocarbon prospects abound."

"It becomes a legal, political and diplomatic issue as to whether France can leapfrog Canadian waters," said Ron Macnab, a Canadian director with the Advisory Board of the Law of the Sea.

The board is comprised of an international panel of ocean scientists and legal scholars that interprets the rules and rights as countries vie for offshore territory.

The document argues that since being hit hard by the collapse of its fishing industry, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are testing the rights of all coastal states and their territorial waters.

It says the French possession and similar "shelf-locked states" could invoke aspects of the Law of the Sea to create "an extended continental shelf" and thus "claim their share of the common heritage of mankind."

Authors of the report admit the concept "raises questions concerning the project of sovereign rights that would, in effect, leapfrog over zones where other states exercised exclusive jurisdiction."

If international bodies endorse the proposal, Canada once again could be required to bargain with France over control of resources off the East Coast.

In 1992, an international tribunal awarded Saint-Pierre and Miquelon exclusive rights over a large corridor of water reaching south to the edge of Canada's 320-kilometre limit.

The corridor turned out to be far smaller than the zone initially claimed by France but significantly larger than what Canada argued the islands deserved.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/11/17/miquelon_051117.html