U.S. President Donald Trump may have forgotten about Greenland for now, but he will be back, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned Tuesday.
Trump was previously fixated on the Arctic island, a self-ruling Danish territory replete with vast caches of largely unmined rare earths, and refused to rule out sending troops or using economic pressure to conquer it.
He has made few, if any public statements about Greenland in recent months, his attention seemingly shifting to other topics. But the reprieve is only temporary, Frederiksen said Tuesday.
“Right now it seems far away. There is perhaps a feeling that we can breathe a sigh of relief,” Frederiksen told the opening of the Danish parliament. But: “It is my belief that we cannot.”
She added that Greenland’s population of 60,000 still lived in fear of an American takeover.
“Imagine what it’s like to live in one of the small settlements along the coast … when the world’s strongest superpower has talked about you as something that can be bought, as something that can be owned, as something that must be had,” she said.
“No matter what happens, we support Greenland in determining its own future. And we will not be threatened or intimidated into doing something that is clearly wrong,” Frederiksen added.
Since Trump’s aggressive overtures, Greenland has sought to deepen ties with the European Union and other partners as a bulwark against Washington, and is preparing to ink a critical minerals partnership with the United Kingdom.
The island’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, told POLITICO in May that Greenland was interested in exploring trade partnerships with “like-minded countries” and slammed Trump for his saber-rattling.
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen is set to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
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