It was reported this morning that both Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede are ready to sit down with President-elect Trump to discuss his security concerns about Greenland.
While the Dutch maintain that Greenland is not for sale, they are ready to “discuss any other U.S. request regarding the island.”
Here’s more from Axios:
Denmark sent private messages in recent days to President-elect Trump’s team expressing willingness to discuss boosting security in Greenland or increasing the U.S. military presence on the island, two sources with knowledge of the issue tell Axios.
Trump’s refusal to rule out military force to take control of Greenland was effectively a threat to invade a longstanding NATO ally. Those comments caught Copenhagen and many other European capitals off guard.
One European diplomat told Axios that Denmark is widely seen as one of the closest allies of the U.S. within the EU, and no one could have imagined it would be the first country with which Trump would pick a fight.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart Múte Egede met on Friday in Copenhagen to discuss the situation.
“Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic,” Egede, an advocate for independence, said at the press conference.
The sources said the Danish government wants to avoid a public clash with the new U.S. administration, and asked members of the Trump team for clarification regarding what exactly the president-elect meant in his comments earlier this week.
The U.S. already has a military base on Greenland and an agreement with Denmark dating to 1951 on defending the island, under which an increase of U.S. forces could easily be discussed.
Danish officials have already said they are looking into further measures to increase investment in military infrastructure and capabilities in Greenland, in consultation with the Greenlandic government.
This is great news for President Trump because a dialogue has already begun and who knows where this will end. I believe Trump will get much more of his way than it may look like right now.
