Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has been tasked with providing the national response to Trump’s threat
BBC NEWS | Published January 10, 2025
Copenhagen’s gloomy January weather matches the mood among Denmark’s politicians and business leaders.
“We take this situation very, very seriously,” said Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – and punish Denmark with high tariffs if it stands in the way.
But, he added, the government had “no ambition whatsoever to escalate some war of words.”
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen downplayed Trump’s own suggestion that the US might use military force to seize Greenland. “I don’t have the fantasy to imagine that it’ll ever get to that,” she told Danish TV.
And Lars Sandahl Sorensen, CEO of Danish Industry, also said there was “every reason to stay calm… no-one has any interest in a trade war.”
But behind the scenes, hastily organised high-level meetings have been taking place in Copenhagen all week, a reflection of the shock caused by Trump’s remarks.
Greenland PM Mute Egede flew in to meet both the prime minister and King Frederik X on Wednesday.
And on Thursday night, party leaders from across the political spectrum gathered for an extraordinary meeting on the crisis with Mette Frederiksen in Denmark’s parliament.
Faced with what many in Denmark are calling Trump’s “provocation,” Frederiksen has broadly attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the US as “Denmark’s closest partner”.
It was “only natural” that the US was preoccupied by the Arctic and Greenland, she added.
Yet she also said that any decision on Greenland’s future should be up to its people alone: “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders… and it’s the Greenlanders themselves who have to define their future.”
Her cautious approach is twofold.
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SOURCE: www.bbc.com
RELATED: Behind Trump’s threat: Why is Greenland so strategically important?
The US president-elect does not rule out using military power to take over the Danish territory – home to a US military base.
AL JAZEERA | Published January 10, 2025
At a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Tuesday, United States President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his desire to acquire Greenland, which he said was critical to American national security.
The Republican leader, who is set to be inaugurated on January 20, refused to rule out using military or economic power to achieve the goal of taking over the autonomous Danish territory.
Trump has also said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state of the US and seize control of the Panama Canal as part of his push for US territorial expansion since winning the elections in November.
So why does Trump want to acquire Greenland — a territory that is 80 percent covered in snow and is more than 3,000km (1,864 miles) from the US capital, Washington, DC? Is it the first time that the US has tried to acquire Greenland?
Where is Greenland? What’s its status?
Located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, Greenland is the world’s largest island and geographically part of North America. Though Australia is much larger and is surrounded by water, it isn’t considered an island because it’s a continent.
Greenland is home to some 56,000 residents, mostly Indigenous Inuit people.
Its capital, Nuuk, is closer to New York (some 2,900km or 1,800 miles) than Copenhagen, which is located 3,500km (2,174 miles) to the east.
The island was under Danish rule from the early 18th century until 1979, when it became a self-governing territory. Since 2009, Greenland has the right to declare independence through a referendum.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede has called for independence from Denmark.
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SOURCE: www.aljazeera.com
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