Thank you very much.
I'm happy to see you again. I will try to answer your very good question. As I also mentioned when I talked in Tokyo, the last time we met, I think that as politicians and lawmakers you have an enormous responsibility to create the environment and the stability in which we professionals can actually work.
If I, for example, have to cooperate with Canadian, American, Russian, and Norwegian coast guards—just to mention some of the organizations that are needed on the operational side of the house—we have to have politicians from each and every one of our countries talking to each other in a decent language, if you catch my drift. I think the first prerequisite to establishing an operational collaboration between the five states up there is that the politicians act towards each other the way they agreed to in the Ilulissat Declaration, because then it's much easier for us to meet and greet and agree on how we then deal with the operational and practical challenges that we face.
What I'm saying here is that it is much more difficult for us to cooperate if the political rhetoric is about setting flags, whether on the seabed or on different islands. I will mention Hans Island at this time. I think Hans Island is a good example of how two countries can agree to disagree on a border dispute and then let the political tools and frameworks work on a scientific basis to find out what is right and what is wrong. In the meantime, Canada and Denmark can actually start to talk together about how to create a joint rescue organization or how to pool their resources in order to cooperate up there.
A couple of years ago a new organization was established, the North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum, which consists of 20 countries that are situated on the rim of the North Atlantic, as the name suggests. I think that is the only professional network—at least that I know of—that has all five polar nations as members. This gives us an opportunity to use that framework to start to discuss how we can deal with all the problems that we'll face in the future. At least we can start from there. My point here, to make it short, is that you need a decent political rhetoric in order to have civil servants such as me cooperate together.
I don't know if that answered your question.