Nuuk (AFP) – Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen arrived Friday in Nuuk for talks with her Greenlandic counterpart after a turbulent week that saw US President Donald Trump back down from threats to seize the Arctic island and agree to negotiations. Denmark has resisted Trump’s demands to take control of Greenland over claims that China and Russia are trying to gain a foothold in the strategic region, with Copenhagen vowing to beef up its own military presence on the island.
Frederiksen’s visit comes after two fraught weeks for Denmark and Greenland, standing up to Trump until NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte reached a purported deal with him on Wednesday that saw the US leader withdraw his threats of military action on Greenland and tariffs against its European allies. Trump and Rutte agreed on what the US leader called a “framework,” the details of which have not been disclosed. Trump said only that the United States “gets everything we wanted” in the plan, which would be in force “forever.” A source familiar with the talks told AFP the US and Denmark would renegotiate a 1951 defense pact on Greenland. That agreement, updated in 2004, already allows Washington to ramp up troop deployments provided it informs Denmark and Greenland in advance.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen stressed Friday there had been no formal, detailed plan hammered out between Trump and Rutte. Rather there “was a framework for a future agreement,” whereby, “instead of those drastic ideas about needing to own Greenland…(Trump) now wishes to negotiate a solution”, Lokke said. Frederiksen held talks with Rutte in Brussels on Friday. They agreed “to enhance deterrence and defense in the Arctic,” Rutte wrote on X after their meeting. The Danish leader later arrived in Greenland on a Danish government airplane. She was greeted with a hug from Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen on the tarmac at Nuuk airport, then rushed into a car without speaking to journalists, AFP reporters at the airport said. No press conference was scheduled during her visit.
Lokke said negotiations on the framework agreement would start soon, focusing on “security, security, and security.” “We will get those meetings started fairly quickly. We will not communicate when those meetings are, because what is needed now is to take the drama out of this.”
Denmark and Greenland have stressed that sovereignty and territorial integrity would be a “red line” in the talks. On Thursday, Greenland Prime Minister Nielsen said he was not aware of the contents of the Trump-Rutte talks, but insisted no deal could be made without involving Nuuk. “Nobody else than Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have the mandate to make deals or agreements,” he told reporters. Frederiksen has repeatedly said the same thing.
A Danish colony for three centuries, Greenland, which has around 57,000 inhabitants, gradually gained autonomy in the second half of the 20th century and obtained self-rule in 2009. But Denmark’s assimilation policies—including de facto bans on the Inuit language and forced sterilizations—have left Greenlanders bitter and angry. While an overwhelming majority of the island’s inhabitants support a decades-long drive for full independence, Trump’s threats over the past year have led to a warming of ties between Denmark and Greenland.
“Greenlanders still have a lot of grievances concerning Denmark’s lack of ability to reconsider its colonial past,” Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, told AFP. “But Trump’s pressure has prompted the wide majority of the (Greenlandic) political spectrum…to put the independence preparations—always a long-term project—aside for now.”
© 2024 AFP
