MOSCOW, October 23 (RAPSI) - Russia will not take part in the Greenpeace piracy case proceedings at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, the Information and Press Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told RIA Novosti Wednesday.

At the same time Russia is open to the settlement of the situation, the source said.

On October 21, the Netherlands filed a request with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to inflict interim measures which must be taken before the trial on the merits to protect the interests of the party in the dispute.

The Arctic Sunrise ship was seized by Russian border guards on September 19 in international waters, within Russia's exclusive economic zone, a day after two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya drilling rig in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea.

On October 9, investigators found drugs aboard the ship.

The court has denied bail requested by activists from Russia (Denis Sinyakov, Yekaterina Zaspa, Andrei Allakhverdov, and Roman Dolgov), UK (Phillip Ball, John Byan, Frank Hewetson, Anthony Perrett, Alexandra Harris and Iain Rogers), New Zealand (David Hossman), US (Peter Wilcox), Argentina (Camila Especiale), Australia (Colin Russell), Finland (Sini Saarela) and Poland (Tomasz Dziemianczuk )

The platform, owned by Gazprom Neft Shelf, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom, is the first ice-resistant stationary oil platform in the world set to produce offshore Arctic oil.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic because they say that it is currently impossible to sufficiently clean up potential oil spills in the region, and that such drilling cannot be economically viable.