LONDON, Sept 22: Britain is seeking to legally annex stretches of the south Atlantic seabed in a bid to tap gas, mineral and oil wealth, in a move that could raise tension with Argentina, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

It plans to file with the United Nations authorities a claim to tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall, The Guardian said.

In a bloody war 25 years ago, British forces expelled Argentine invasion forces from the Falkland Islands, which is 13,000 kilometres from Britain. Argentina claims the Falklands, or Malvinas, as their own.

The British government is trying to speed up the application process with the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS) ahead of an international deadline in May 2009, the newspaper said.

In a novel legal approach, any state can use detailed geological and geophysical surveys to demarcate a new “continental shelf outer limit” that can extend up to the 350 miles from its shoreline, The Guardian said.

The British government has collected data for most of what it is submitting, it added.

Chris Carleton, head of the law of the sea division at the UK Hydrographic Office, said preliminary talks on Rockall are due to be held next week in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, according to the newspaper.

The Falklands claim has the greatest potential for diplomatic tension, Carleton said.

Britain has been granted licences for exploratory drilling around the islands within the normal 200-mile exploration limit and any new claim to UNCLCS would extend territorial rights further into the Atlantic.

“It would be beyond the 200-mile limit but less than 350 miles,” said Carleton, who is involved in preparing the submission.

“It effectively joins up the area around South Georgia to the Falklands.

It’s a claim but how it’s handled has not been decided yet. The Argentinians will say it’s not ours to claim. It’s all a bit tricky,” he was quoted as saying.—AFP