Five countries around the Arctic rim have agreed to let the United Nations decide their conflicting territorial claims over the region's seabed. The current rules aim to fix borders on a clear geological basis, but have created a tangle of overlapping claims on the seabed, which may hold up to a quarter of the world's undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves.

The issue was important enough to bring Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to a remote corner of Greenland for the two day sovereignty summit.

Ministers from Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States were also present.