“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danish, we want to be Greenlanders,” the leaders of five parties in parliament said late on Friday.
“The future of Greenland must be decided by Greenlanders,” they said.
Their declaration came after Trump had said earlier in the day that the United States needs to own Greenland to prevent other countries from occupying it in the future.
“We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” he said at the White House while meeting with oil company executives.
Trump said the United States must acquire Greenland, even though it already has a military presence on the island under a 1951 agreement, because such deals are not enough to guarantee Greenland’s defence. The island of 57,000 people is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.
“You defend ownership. You don’t defend leases. And we’ll have to defend Greenland,” he said.
Trump and White House officials have been discussing various plans to bring Greenland under US control, including potential use of the military and lump sum payments to Greenlanders as part of a bid to convince them to secede from Denmark and potentially join the United States.
Leaders in Copenhagen and throughout Europe have reacted with disdain in recent days to comments by Trump and other White House officials asserting their right to Greenland. The United States and Denmark are Nato allies bound by a mutual defence agreement.
On Tuesday, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain and Denmark issued a joint statement, saying only Greenland and Denmark can decide matters regarding their relations. (AFP/Reuters)
