By Nandita Bose, Simon Lewis and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
WASHINGTON/NUUK, Jan 14 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump reiterated on Wednesday that the U.S. needs Greenland and that Denmark cannot be relied upon to protect the island, even as he said that “something will work out” with respect to the future governance of the Danish overseas territory.
The remarks, which came after a high-stakes meeting between U.S., Danish and Greenlandic officials, indicates that there are still fundamental differences between how Washington, Copenhagen and Nuuk see the political future of the island.
“Greenland is very important for the national security, including of Denmark,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And the problem is there’s not a thing that Denmark can do about it if Russia or China wants to occupy Greenland, but there’s everything we can do. You found that out last week with Venezuela,” he added.
Earlier in the day, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance at the White House.
Following that meeting, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt said the U.S. and Denmark would form a working group to discuss a broad array of concerns regarding the island that could meet in the coming weeks.
But they also made clear that Washington had not budged on its position that it must acquire Greenland, an outcome Rasmussen and Motzfeldt described as an unacceptable breach of sovereignty.
“We didn’t manage to change the American position,” Rasmussen told reporters outside the Danish embassy in Washington after the meeting concluded.
“It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland.”
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington, Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Nuuk, Tom Little and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen; John Irish, Elizabeth Pineau and Louise Rasmussen in Paris; Jan Strupczweski and Inti Landauro in Brussels; Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Terje Solsvik, Gwladys Fouche and Gram Slattery; Editing by Alex Richardson, Alistair Bell, Don Durfee and Chizu Nomiyama)
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