Key Highlights
- We have to respect our territorial integrity.
- We have to respect international law, sovereignty,” Nielsen said, adding that if Greenlanders had to choose, “We choose the Kingdom of Denmark, we choose the EU, we choose Nato.”Nielsen told a press conference in the Greenlandic capital, Nuuk: “Nobody other than Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have the mandate to make deals or agreements about Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark without us.”A day after backing away from his threat to use tariffs as leverage to seize Greenland, and ruling out the use of force, Trump said earlier on Thursday that the “framework deal of a future deal” gave the US “total access” with “no end, no time limit”. The US president had on Wednesday hailed an “ultimate long-term deal” with Nato that he said would settle the transatlantic dispute over Greenland after weeks of rising tensions that risked the biggest breakdown in transatlantic relations in decades. But the precise terms of the agreement apparently struck between Trump and Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary general, remained unclear and the Danish government also insisted there was no question of it compromising territorial integrity.“We can negotiate all political aspects – security, investment, the economy – but we cannot negotiate our sovereignty,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said.
- The Danish defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said Rutte “cannot negotiate” on Denmark’s or Greenland’s behalf. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said matters of security, investment and economy were up for discussion.
- homas Traasdahl/ReutersHowever, Poulsen said, Rutte was working “loyally to maintain unity within Nato” and it was “very positive” that the alliance wanted to do more to strengthen Arctic security.
- “We are in a much better place today than we were yesterday,” he said. Speaking at a campaign-style rally in Ohio on Thursday, the US vice-president, JD Vance, said negotiations with Nato were “going fine”.
