Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has said he will summon the US ambassador to Denmark after a US media reported that Washington would intensify spying on Greenland.
The Wall Street Journal article “raised a lot of concern, because friends don’t spy on each other”, Rasmussen said in Warsaw on Wednesday. “This is very serious, so we will summon the ambassador for a meeting at the foreign ministry.”
“I can’t know if it’s true because it’s in a newspaper. But those commenting on it don’t seem to be strongly denying it. That concerns me,” he said according to news wire Ritzau.
The Journal report cited two people as saying the United States was stepping up its intelligence gathering on Greenland.
Rasmussen said he hoped, “obviously, that this can be refuted” during the meeting with the US envoy, and “in any case the aim is to make clear Denmark’s position on this issue.”
“It’s very concerning if the approach is now to gather intelligence in Denmark and Greenland, apparently with the aim of identifying potential divisions to exploit.
“That’s not the kind of cooperation we should have, so I view this with considerable seriousness,” he said to Ritzau.
READ ALSO: United States to ‘step up espionage’ on Denmark and Greenland as part of takeover goal
The US Embassy declined to comment on the story when approached by Ritzau on Wednesday.
The Danish foreign ministry has not yet disclosed when the conversation will take place or what form it will take.
Rasmussen may not be present at any meeting himself, given that they are sometimes conducted by other senior officials at the ministry.
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The meetings can be used to gather information but also to send a clear diplomatic signal to the country whose ambassador has been summoned.
Trump has insisted he wants to seize the autonomous Danish territory, claiming Washington needs control of the mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons.
The WSJ story is based on two sources which it says are “familiar with the effort”. The US administration has asked its intelligence services to increase activities in Greenland, according to the report.
High-ranking officials under US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last week issued a “collection emphasis message” to intelligence-agency heads, in which they were directed to learn more about more about Greenlandic independence movements and views on American resource extraction, the newspaper writes.
That involves US intelligence identifying persons in Greenland and Denmark who support US goals for the territory.
A spokesman from the US National Security Council told the WSJ that the White House doesn’t comment on intelligence matters but repeated Trump’s line that his interest in Greenland is related to security concerns.