Denmark’s PM says Greenland showdown at ‘decisive moment’

Denmark is acceptable to support its values, Mette Frederiksen says, arsenic Trump renews threats to prehend the Danish territory.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said her state faces a “decisive moment” implicit the aboriginal of Greenland aft US President Donald Trump renewed his threats to prehend the Arctic territory by force.

Ahead of meetings successful Washington, DC, from Monday, connected the planetary scramble for cardinal earthy materials, Frederiksen said that “there is simply a struggle implicit Greenland”.

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“This is simply a decisive moment”, with stakes that spell beyond the contiguous contented of Greenland’s future, Frederiksen added successful a statement with different Danish governmental leaders.

“We are acceptable to support our values – wherever it is indispensable  – besides successful the Arctic. We judge successful planetary instrumentality and successful peoples’ close to self-determination,” the premier curate posted connected Facebook.

Germany and Sweden backed Denmark against Trump’s latest claims to the self-governing Danish territory.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned the US’s “threatening rhetoric” aft Trump repeated that Washington was “going to bash thing connected Greenland, whether they similar it oregon not”.

“Sweden, the Nordic countries, the Baltic states, and respective large European countries basal unneurotic with our Danish friends,” Kristersson told a defence league successful Salen, successful which the US wide successful complaint of NATO took part.

Kristersson said a US takeover of mineral-rich Greenland would beryllium “a usurpation of planetary law, and risks encouraging different countries to enactment successful precisely the aforesaid way”.

Germany reiterated its enactment for Denmark and Greenland up of the Washington discussions.

Before gathering his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, connected Monday, German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadehpul held talks successful Iceland to code the “strategic challenges of the Far North”, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.

“Security successful the Arctic is becoming much and much important”, and “is portion of our communal involvement successful NATO”, helium said astatine a associated quality league with Icelandic Minister for Foreign Affairs Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir.

The United Kingdom’s Telegraph paper reported connected Saturday that subject chiefs from the UK and different European countries were drafting up plans for a imaginable NATO ngo successful Greenland.

The paper said that UK officials had begun early-stage talks with Germany, France and others connected plans that could impact deploying UK troops, warships and craft to support Greenland from Russia and China.

UK Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander told Sky News that talks connected however to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin successful the Arctic were “business arsenic usual”.

“It’s becoming an progressively contested geopolitical region, with Russia and China… you would expect america to beryllium talking to each our allies successful NATO astir what we tin bash to deter Russian aggression successful the Arctic Circle,” Alexander said.

In an interrogation with the Reuters quality agency, Belgian Minister of Defence Theo Francken said that NATO should motorboat an cognition successful the Arctic to code US information concerns.

“We person to collaborate, enactment unneurotic and amusement spot and unity,” Francken said, adding that determination is simply a request for “a NATO cognition successful the precocious north”.

Francken suggested NATO’s Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry operations, which harvester forces from antithetic countries with drones, sensors and different exertion to show onshore and sea, arsenic imaginable models for an “Arctic Sentry”.

Trump claims that controlling Greenland is important for US nationalist information due to the fact that of the rising Russian and Chinese subject enactment successful the Arctic.

A Danish colony until 1953, Greenland gained location regularisation 26 years aboriginal and is contemplating yet loosening its ties with Denmark.

Polls indicate that Greenland’s colonisation powerfully reason a US takeover.