Officials from Denmark, Greenland and the US meet for a ‘frank’ conversation amid Trump’s threats
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
By AMELIA NIERENBERG
Denmark, Greenland and the United States have a “fundamental disagreement” over the future of the territory in the North Atlantic, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, said Wednesday after a White House meeting with top Trump administration officials.
The meeting — hours after President Donald Trump said the United States “needs Greenland” — was the first among the three governments and was called to discuss Trump’s repeated threats to buy or take the semiautonomous Danish territory. Afterward, Rasmussen called the discussion “frank” and “constructive” even as he underscored that Denmark has no interest in changing the status quo.
“Our perspectives continue to differ,” Rasmussen said after he and Vivian Motzfeldt, the Greenland foreign minister, met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. “The president has made his view clear. And we have a different position.”
The closed-door conversation came hours after Trump said that “anything less than” American control of Greenland would be “unacceptable,” in a post on Truth Social. “The United States needs Greenland,” he said, renewing his argument that possession of the island was necessary for national security. “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES,” he added.
Trump has turned up the pressure on Greenland this year, apparently emboldened by the success of the U.S. military operation that led to the capture of Venezuela’s leader Jan. 3. He said last week that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
But Denmark and Greenland have stood united in the face of his threats. Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen of Greenland told journalists Tuesday that Greenland would rather remain with Denmark, its former colonizer, than join the United States under the Trump administration.
“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” he said Tuesday during a joint news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark. It was his strongest statement yet on Greenland’s desire to remain a territory of Denmark.
Frederiksen has said that an American attack on Greenland — which, as a part of the kingdom of Denmark, is already under the protection of NATO — would destroy the alliance. And Nielsen has been clear that the territory is not interested in an American takeover.
“The time has not come for internal discussions and division,” Nielsen said Tuesday, speaking of its often fraught relations with Denmark. “The time has come to stand together.”
In her comments, Frederiksen agreed, laying out the visiting officials’ strategy for the White House meeting: “We come together, we stay together, and we leave together.”
Trump and top officials in his administration have given various explanations of how the United States might take control or ownership of Greenland. Trump has not ruled out taking Greenland with military force, but Rubio has said the president plans to buy it, rather than invade.
But buying Greenland may be a nonstarter. Denmark does not have the authority to sell Greenland, and Nielsen has said repeatedly that the territory is not for sale.
Ulrik Pram Gad, a Greenland expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said the very fact of a face-to-face meeting with U.S. officials was a sign of progress.
“The bar for success is very low,” he said.
“A success from this meeting would be that we had a meeting,” he said. “It’s a process. We are now talking.”
Vance appeared to be a late addition to the meeting, which Rubio announced last week without mentioning the vice president.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the think tank Bruegel in Brussels, said the presence of Vance, a higher-ranking official who has shown a willingness to publicly and aggressively challenge foreign officials, raised the stakes for the meeting.
“The fact that it is not just foreign ministers — that it is also JD Vance — is upping the ante a bit,” Kirkegaard said.
On Friday and Saturday, a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers will go to Copenhagen, the Danish capital, to meet with political and business leaders from Denmark and Greenland.
The goal of the visit, said Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., is to show that U.S. lawmakers “oppose President Trump’s aggressive efforts to acquire Greenland.”
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