COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) \u2014 Leaders of Denmark and Greenland insisted Thursday that the island\u2019s sovereignty was non-negotiable after U.S. President Donald Trump said he had agreed with the NATO chief on the framework of a future Arctic security deal that Trump said would grant the U.S. \u201ctotal access\u201d to the territory.<\/p>\n
Much about the potential deal remained unclear, though Trump said in a Fox Business interview that \u201cwe\u2019re going to have total access to Greenland,\u201d a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. He added that \u201cwe\u2019re going to have all the military access we want.\u201d<\/p>\n
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said the alliance\u2019s secretary general, Mark Rutte, did not propose any \u201ccompromise to sovereignty\u201d in discussions with Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has repeatedly argued that the U.S. needed Greenland to counter threats from Russia and China, on Wednesday abruptly scrapped the tariffs<\/a> he had threatened to impose on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland<\/a>. It was a dramatic reversal hours after he insisted he wanted to get the island \u201cincluding right, title and ownership\u201d \u2014 though he also said he would not use force.<\/p>\n Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen voiced guarded relief, but he said he knew no concrete details of the agreement Trump cited. <\/p>\n \u201c\u2018I don\u2019t know what there is in the agreement, or the deal about my country,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n Trump called it a \u201cframework of a future deal\u201d that, if completed, would also allow the United States to install an element of his \u201cGolden Dome,\u201d<\/a> part of a multibillion dollar missile defense system, in Greenland.<\/p>\n Denmark and Greenland insist on sovereignty<\/p>\n Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said security in the Arctic is a matter for all of NATO, and it is \u201cgood and natural\u201d that it be discussed between the U.S. president and Rutte. She said in a statement that she had spoken with Rutte \u201con an ongoing basis,\u201d including before and after he met Trump in Davos.<\/p>\n She wrote that \u201cwe cannot negotiate on our sovereignty\u201d and added: \u201cI have been informed that this has not been the case.\u201d <\/p>\n Frederiksen said that Denmark wants to continue engaging in constructive dialogue with allies on how to strengthen security in the Arctic, including the Golden Dome program, \u201cprovided that this is done with respect for our territorial integrity.\u201d <\/p>\n Denmark has said the U.S., which already has a military presence in Greenland, can boost its bases there. The U.S. is already party to a 1951 treaty that gives it broad rights to set up military bases there with the consent of Denmark and Greenland.<\/p>\n Hart, the NATO spokesperson, said that Rutte \u201cdid not propose any compromise to sovereignty during his meeting with President Trump.\u201d She said that negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the U.S. \u201cwill go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold – economically or militarily – in Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n Danish officials have noted that, in any case, NATO doesn\u2019t have a mandate to negotiate a deal on behalf of Denmark and Greenland.<\/p>\n Nielsen, Greenland\u2019s leader, said Rutte had delivered the message that Greenland is willing to do more and host a NATO mission.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil yesterday, we couldn\u2019t rule out anything,\u201d he told reporters in the island\u2019s capital, Nuuk. \u201cRespectful dialogue through the right channels is what we have been seeking from the get-go, and I also feel that\u2019s the intention now from the other parties, and I\u2019m happy for that.\u201d <\/p>\n He pointed to a working group<\/a> that the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers agreed with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to set up last week, before Trump threatened tariffs. Denmark and the White House at the time offered diverging public views<\/a> on its purpose.<\/p>\n Asked whether U.S. sovereignty over small pockets of Greenland might be a possibility, Nielsen said that \u201cwe are ready to negotiate a better partnership and so on, but sovereignty is a red line.\u201d <\/p>\n Skepticism for Trump\u2019s switch<\/p>\n On the streets of Copenhagen, some were skeptical about Trump\u2019s switch.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the man has said many things and done a lot of different things to what he says,\u201d said Louise Pedersen, 22, who works with a startup company. \u201cI have a hard time believing it. I think it\u2019s terrifying that we stand here in 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n She said it\u2019s for Greenlanders to decide what happens with their land \u2014 \u201cnot Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t really trust anything Mr. Trump is saying,\u201d said Poul Bjoern Strand, 70, who works in advertising.<\/p>\n Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, one of the European countries that had faced Trump\u2019s threat of tariffs over Greenland, underlined the need for European NATO allies to do more to secure the Arctic region.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will protect Denmark, Greenland, the north from the threat posed by Russia,\u201d he said at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. \u201cWe will uphold the principles on which the trans-Atlantic partnership is founded, namely sovereignty and territorial integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe support talks between Denmark, Greenland (and) the United States on the basis of these principles,\u201d aiming for closer cooperation, Merz said. \u201cIt is good news that we are making steps into that right direction. I welcome President Trump\u2019s remarks from last night \u2014 this is the right way to go.\u201d <\/p>\n Frederiksen traveled to the United Kingdom on Thursday for talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said the \u201chard yards\u201d of bolstering Arctic security can begin and credited Trump\u2019s \u201cpragmatism\u201d for withdrawing his tariff threats.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Moulson reported from Berlin and Burrows from Nuuk, Greenland. Aamer Madhani in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) \u2014 Leaders of Denmark and Greenland insisted Thursday that the island\u2019s sovereignty was non-negotiable after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[5926,27,26,5923,184,235,1162,57,1160,1689,651,1317,5927,2375,1596,74,2378,1158,5925,2374,5924,1161],"class_list":["post-6906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-allison-hart","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-denmark-government","tag-donald-trump","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-general-news","tag-greenland","tag-international-agreements","tag-international-trade","tag-jd-vance","tag-keir-starmer","tag-louise-pedersen","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nato","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-politics","tag-poul-bjoern-strand","tag-send-to-apple-news","tag-tariffs-and-global-trade","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}