Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussnen will meet his U.S. counterpart Marco Rubio at a NATO meeting this week, his ministry said Tuesday, amid tensions over U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to take Greenland.
Despite the strained relations between the countries over the autonomous Danish territory, the ministry specified that “neither Greenland nor the Arctic are planned to be discussed”.
“A meeting between Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Marco Rubio is being scheduled in connection with the NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brussels” on Thursday and Friday, the ministry said in a statement to AFP.
“It is expected that both the situation in Ukraine and the security of Europe will be on the agenda, topics which are also anticipated to be discussed at the NATO meeting itself,” it said.
Trump says the United States needs the vast Arctic island for its security and has refused to rule out the use of force to secure it.
“We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100 percent,” Trump told NBC News television on Sunday.
While on a visit to a US military base in the Arctic territory on Friday, US Vice President JD Vance also accused Denmark of not having “done a good job by the people of Greenland”.
Lokke replied by saying they did not appreciate Vance’s “tone”.
“The 1951 defence agreement offers the United States many opportunities to have a much stronger military presence in Greenland. If that’s what you want, let’s discuss it,” Lokke said.
