WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. needs to own Greenland to prevent Russia or China from occupying it in the \u200bfuture, President Donald Trump said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“We are going \u200cto do something on Greenland whether they like it or not. Because if we \u200cdon’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor,” Trump told reporters at the White House while meeting with oil company executives.<\/p>\n
Trump \u2060said the U.S. must \u200cacquire Greenland, even though it already has a military presence on the island under a 1951 agreement, because \u200dsuch deals are not enough to guarantee Greenland’s defense. The island of 57,000 people is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.<\/p>\n
“You defend ownership. You \u200bdon’t defend leases. And we’ll have to defend Greenland. If \u200cwe don’t do it, China or Russia will,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
Trump and White House officials have been discussing various plans to bring Greenland under U.S. control, including potential use of the U.S. military and lump sum payments to Greenlanders as part of a bid to convince \u2060them to secede from Denmark and potentially \u200bjoin the U.S.<\/p>\n
Leaders in Copenhagen and throughout \u200bEurope have reacted with disdain in recent days to comments by Trump and other White House officials asserting \u200dtheir right to Greenland. \u2060The U.S. and Denmark are NATO allies bound by a mutual defense agreement.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain \u2060and Denmark issued a joint statement, saying only Greenland and Denmark can decide matters \u200cregarding their relations.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Bo Erickson; Writing by Ryan \u200cPatrick Jones; Editing by Christian Martinez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. needs to own Greenland to prevent Russia or China from occupying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[1395,32,366,207394,332,1018],"class_list":{"0":"post-685516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-greenland","11":"tag-kingdom-of-denmark","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-white-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115867755784965079","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}