JD Vance will host a meeting with the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark amid rising tensions over Donald Trump’s push to gain control of the Arctic island.
Denmark’s top diplomat, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said he and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, had requested the meeting with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the vice-president had asked to take part and would host it at the White House on Wednesday.
“Our reason for seeking the meeting we have now been given was to move this whole discussion … into a meeting room where we can look each other in the eye and talk about these things,” Rasmussen told reporters in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
Trump first floated the idea of a US takeover of Greenland, a largely self-governing part of Denmark, in 2019, during his first term. But he has significantly ramped up his rhetoric this month, saying the US would take it “one way or the other”.
The US president has shocked the EU and Nato by refusing to rule out using military force to seize the strategically located, mineral-rich island. This is despite Greenland being covered by many of the protections offered by the two blocs because Denmark belongs to both.
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said a US invasion would lead to the end of Nato and European leaders have pledged their support for Greenland’s territorial integrity and right to self-determination.
Denmark’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said after a meeting of the Danish parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday that he and Motzfeldt would meet the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, in Brussels next Monday to discuss the issue.
Poulsen said Denmark planned a larger military presence alongside other Nato countries in Greenland this year, adding that Copenhagen sought “greater attention from Nato in relation to issues regarding Nato’s presence in and around the Arctic”.
Denmark will also host a meeting of the foreign, security and defence policy contact committee of the Danish, Greenlandic and Faroese governments on Wednesday. Officials said this would be an “opportunity to discuss the political and economic situation”.
Greenland’s coalition government said on Monday it could not “under any circumstances accept” a US takeover and would intensify its efforts to “ensure that the defence of Greenland is carried out within the framework of Nato”.
It said that it believed Greenland would remain a member of the western defence alliance “for ever” and that “all Nato member states, including the US, have a common interest” in the defence of the vast Arctic island.
Trump argues that the US needs to control Greenland to increase Arctic security in the face of an alleged threat from China and Russia. Rutte said on Monday that Nato was “working on the next steps” and “all allies agreed on the importance of Arctic security”.
Alliance members including France and Germany have floated suggestions including bolstering Nato’s presence in the region or stationing troops on Greenland itself. But diplomats say talks are at a very early stage and there are no concrete plans.
In Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, Pele Broberg, the leader of opposition party Naleraq, told the Guardian the preferable outcome of the Washington talks was to reach a deal with the US. “They want to do a deal the easy way or the hard way: who wants the hard way?” he asked.
He said a deal would be “great, but we haven’t heard about it”. He also questioned Løkke’s attendance, saying the talks had “nothing to do with Danish foreign politics, and everything to do with the Greenlandic people’s future”.
Greenland has been moving toward independence since 1979, when it won self-rule from Denmark. The goal is shared by all political parties elected to the island’s parliament, although there are differences over the best timescale.
Broberg accused Copenhagen of using “Nato, and the Danish ownership of Greenland” to have a say in Greenland’s future. “It shows that they are still not ready to actually let us go,” he said.
