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EDMONTON — Arctic experts from Canada and Denmark are proposing a novel solution to who controls an ice-bound speck of an island midway between the two countries.

Turn Hans Island into a condominium.

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“It would resolve a long-standing dispute that, although insignificant, has some small potential to cause friction in the future,” said Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia international law professor.

On Thursday, Byers and a Danish colleague are to present a proposal suggesting that Canada and Denmark share sovereignty over the 1.2-square-kilometre pimple of rock that protrudes from the Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

Like a residential building where control is shared among the people who live there, the two countries could decide to co-manage Hans Island.

They could hand off day-to-day management of the disputed land to Inuit from Nunavut and Greenland. Or they could declare the whole thing a park, based on the model of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park linking Alberta and Montana.