US Secretary of StateMarco Rubiosaid he plans to meet with Danish officials next week. This comes after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to take overGreenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory ofDenmark.
Greenland will also join the meeting, its foreign minister said on Wednesday.
PresidentDonald Trumphas argued that the US needs to control the worlds largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats fromChinaandRussiain theArctic, and the White House has refused torule out using military forceto acquire the territory.
Rubio told a select group of lawmakers that it was the administrations intention toeventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to usingmilitaryforce.
The remarks, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, were made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity because it was a private discussion.
On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term.
Thats always been the presidents intent from the very beginning, Rubio said. Hes not the first US president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.
Read moreTaking over Greenland, a long-standing US obsession
Tensions withNATOmembers escalated after the White House said Tuesday that the US military is always an option.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned earlier this week that a US takeover would amount tothe end of NATO.
Rubio did not directly answer a question about whether the Trump administration is willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland.
Im not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, Ill be meeting with them next week, well have those conversations with them then, but I dont have anything further to add to that," Rubio said, telling reporters that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, have requested a meeting with Rubio in the near future, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland's government website. Previous requests for a sit-down were not successful, the statement said.
The leaders ofFrance, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Frederiksen in a statement Tuesday reaffirming that the mineral-rich island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, belongs to its people.
Denmarks parliament approved a bill last June to allow US military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, where US troops had broad access to Danish airbases in the Scandinavian country.
Rasmussen, in a response to lawmakers questions, wrote over the summer that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the US tries to annex all or part of Greenland.
But in the event of a military action, the US Department of Defense currently operates the remote Pituffik Space Base, in northwestern Greenland, and the troops there could be mobilised.
French Foreign MinisterJean-Nol Barrotsaid he spoke by phone Tuesday with Rubio, who dismissed the idea of a Venezuela-style operation in Greenland.
In the United States, there is massive support for the country belonging to NATO a membership that, from one day to the next, would be compromised by any form of aggressiveness toward another member of NATO, Barrot told France Inter radio on Wednesday.
Asked if he has a plan in case Trump does claim Greenland, Barrot said he would not engage in fiction diplomacy.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
Originally published on France24
