Denmark has warned that tensions with the United States over Greenland could intensify, as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that her country has faced from Washington.
Frederiksen made these remarks at a joint briefing with Greenland’s Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, ahead of tomorrow’s high stakes meeting between the Foreign Ministers of Denmark and Greenland in Washington with Marco Rubio and JD Vance.
Danish Foreign Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen told reporters that Denmark and Greenland requested the meeting to discuss in person the latest on Greenland after increasingly assertive comments from US officials, including US President Donald Trump, about their ambition to control the territory.
In her opening comments, Frederiksen admitted that “it has not been easy” for Denmark to “stand up to completely unacceptable pressure from our closest ally for a generation.”
However, she darkly warned that “there is much evidence the hardest part now lies ahead of us.”
She also said that “something more fundamental” is at stake, as Denmark faces the need to defend the principles of “not being able to change borders by force … or buying another people, and small countries not having to fear large countries.”
She stressed that Denmark is “not looking for conflict, but the message is clear: Greenland is not for sale.” She added that NATO has to “defend Greenland just as much as every other millimeter of NATO territory.”
Speaking after Frederiksen, Greenland’s Prime Minister Jans-Frederik Nielsen reiterated that Greenland is not for sale, and insists that if the territory was to choose, it would “choose Denmark over the US.”
“One thing must be clear to everyone: Greenland does not want to be owned by the US, Greenland does not want to be governed by the US, Greenland does not want to be part of the US. …We choose the Greenland we know today, which is a part of the Kingdon of Denmark.”
Jans-Frederik Nielsen
He repeatedly stressed that Greenland cannot be bought, and its future must be decided by the Greenlanders, and “that is also the message we will be taking with us to the US tomorrow.”
Prior to the joint briefing, Pele Broberg, leader of Greenland’s opposition party Naleraq, which came second in last year’s election accused Copenhagen of “using NATO and the Danish ownership of Greenland” to have a say in Greenland’s future. He said, “It shows they are still not ready to actually let us go.”
Speaking to a news agency, he called on the governments to be open about what is said in the meeting to stop speculation.
“I hope they have a meeting where they go out with a press conference afterwards and say ‘this has been talked about’. ‘Offers of free association or not’, ‘offers of annexation or not’ or whatever they talked about.”
Pele Broberg
He also questioned the inclusion of the Danish Foreign Minister in tomorrow’s meeting.
“It’s a little bit strange that it is not a meeting between the US and Greenlandic Foreign Ministers, but that the Danish Foreign Minister is in on that meeting. The reason why it doesn’t make sense for me is it has nothing to do with Danish foreign politics and everything to do with the Greenlandic peoples’ future.”
Pele Broberg
Additionally, he noted that the preferable outcome is to reach a deal with the US.
“They want to do a deal the easy way or the hard way: who wants the hard way? I don’t understand why that’s a subject. If there is a deal to be made great, but we haven’t heard about it, we have no clue what he is talking about. So that will be interesting after Wednesday.”
Pele Broberg
Meanwhile, Broberg criticised the Greenlandic government’s decision to release a statement in which it said it would increase its efforts to ensure its defence took place “in the NATO framework” so soon before Wednesday’s meeting.
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