Greenpeace Preparing to Set Up Permanent Antarctic Base Camp

The crew of the flagship of the environmental group Greenpeace stood on ice in a bay in the Antarctic Friday and declared the huge continent a world park.

Hours later, the 35-man crew, cheered by an improvement in weather conditions, sailed back toward the area where it hopes to set up a permanent base camp, expedition director Peter Wilkinson said.

He said in a telephone interview that the expedition was only a few hours from Ross Island in McMurdo Sound, the proposed site of the first private research base on the southern continent.

Greenpeace said nine days ago it abandoned plans to establish the camp because unusually heavy summer pack ice blocked its path to Ross Island.

Wilkinson said construction of a base where four people could spend the winter was still out of the question because it would take at least four weeks.