Denmark, Greenland seek to meet with Rubio as Trump repeats threats – National
Denmark and Greenland are seeking a meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take over the strategic Arctic island, a Danish territory.
Tensions flared after the White House said Tuesday that “US military remains an option.” US President Donald Trump said the US needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its security in the face of growing threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned earlier this week that a US takeover would lead to the end of the NATO military alliance.
“The Nordics rarely make statements like this,” Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Center, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump, whose bombastic language is accompanied by direct threats and intimidation, threatening the truth of another alliance by saying ‘I will control or add territory.’
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Frederiksen in a statement on Tuesday affirming that the mineral-rich island “belongs to its people.”
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Their statement defended the sovereignty of Greenland, which is a sovereign territory of Denmark and thus part of NATO.
The action of the US military in Venezuela this weekend has raised fears throughout Europe, and Trump and his advisers in recent days have reiterated the desire of the American leader to take over the island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic routes to North America.
“It’s very strategic now,” Trump told reporters on Sunday.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, have requested a meeting with Rubio in the near future, according to a statement posted Tuesday on the Greenland government’s website.
Previous requests for a sit-down were unsuccessful, the statement said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he spoke by phone on Tuesday with Rubio, who rejected the idea of a Venezuela-style operation in Greenland.
“In the United States, there is great support for a country that is part of NATO – a membership that would, from one day to the next, be in danger … by any kind of aggression from another NATO member,” Barrot told France Inter radio on Wednesday.
Asked if he had a plan in case Trump wanted Greenland, Barrot said he would not engage in “disinformation.”
Although the majority of US Republicans supported Trump’s statement, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, the Democratic and Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, criticized Trump’s statement in a statement on Tuesday.
“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” the statement said. “Any suggestion that our nation can enter into a NATO alliance through force or external pressure undermines the very principles of choice our Alliance exists to protect.”
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