By Soren Jeppesen and Stine Jacobsen
COPENHAGEN, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Friday she had agreed with NATO chief Mark Rutte that the alliance needs to boost security in the Arctic following weeks of turmoil over U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Greenland.
The governments of Denmark and Greenland, a Danish autonomous territory, insist that sovereignty over the island is not up for discussion, but have said they are open to talks on a wide range of other topics.
Trump said on Thursday he had secured total and permanent U.S. access to Greenland after talks with Rutte, while the NATO chief said allies would have to step up efforts to ward off threats from Russia and China in the high north.
“We agree that NATO must increase its engagement in the Arctic. Defense and security in the Arctic is a matter for the entire alliance,” Frederiksen said in a social media post on Friday, along with a photo of herself and Rutte in Brussels.
Rutte said he was working with the Danish leader to enhance deterrence and defence.
Frederiksen will travel to Greenland’s capital Nuuk later on Friday to meet with the island’s prime minister.
Denmark’s foreign minister said on Friday that diplomats from Denmark and the United States had met in Washington on Thursday, establishing a plan for how to proceed.
“We will not communicate when those (future) meetings are, because what is needed now is to take the drama out of this… we need a calm process,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.
A source familiar with the matter said on Thursday that Rutte and Trump had agreed in Davos on further talks between the U.S., Denmark and Greenland on updating a 1951 agreement that governs U.S. military access and presence on the Arctic island.
(Reporting by Soren Jeppesen and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, editing by Terje Solsvik and Toby Chopra)
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