Danish officials pushed back on Thursday against any talk of compromising on the sovereignty of Greenland amid confusion over what kind of deal NATO leaders may have struck with President Trump over the future of the Arctic island.
“We can negotiate on everything political; security, investments, economy. But we cannot negotiate on our sovereignty,” Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, said in a statement on Thursday about Greenland.
Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for more than 300 years, and “only Denmark and Greenland themselves can make decisions on issues concerning Denmark and Greenland,” Ms. Frederiksen said.
It is not clear whether Denmark’s position could scuttle any possible agreement over Greenland that Mr. Trump said he had reached with Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, on Wednesday evening.
Mr. Trump had been insisting that the United States take over the island, despite resistance from Denmark and Greenland. He did not reveal the details of a possible breakthrough though he called it “the ultimate long term deal.”
Several Western officials said one possible compromise floated by NATO officials was that the United States could obtain sovereignty over land for its military bases in Greenland. Right now, it has one, a remote missile defense station with around 150 personnel.
Ms. Frederiksen said that she has been speaking with Mr. Rutte “on an ongoing basis.” But it’s not clear how much Denmark has been actually involved in the discussions with Mr. Trump. She seemed to be trying to protect Denmark and Greenland from being excluded and emphasized that Mr. Rutte “does not have a mandate to negotiate on behalf of Greenland.”
“Nor does he have a mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark,” she added.
Officials in Greenland’s semiautonomous government seemed upset as well about what was unfolding and their lack of participation in the decision making. “I don’t know what there is in the agreement or the deal about my country, that over some discussions I didn’t attend,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the island’s prime minister, said on Thursday. “I don’t know what’s concrete in it.”
Already under an American-Danish defense pact, the United States enjoys sweeping military access to Greenland. A potential new arrangement could upgrade American control over its bases on the island.
But Ms. Frederiksen bristled at any suggestion of changing the sovereign status of any territory on Greenland.
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“Our red lines are the same as they have been all along,” she said in a televised interview. “We will of course not cede sovereignty. And Greenland’s future must be defined by Greenland, and Greenland is part of Denmark.”
Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark’s defense minister, indicated that the Greenland crisis might have eased but that it wasn’t over.
“There will certainly be more difficult conversations with the Americans,” he said in a post on social media. “But following Wednesday’s meeting between NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Donald Trump, we are in a clearly better place today than we were yesterday.”
He added: “Rutte cannot of course negotiate an agreement on behalf of Denmark or Greenland, but my impression is that Rutte has worked loyally for the unity of NATO.”
“It is very positive that NATO will now do more to strengthen security in and around the Arctic,” he said. “I am very happy about that.”
Greenlanders haven’t been happy at all. They have resented Mr. Trump’s acquisitive approach to their homeland since he first floated the idea of buying the island, the world’s largest, from Denmark during his first term.
On Wednesday night, in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Trump mistakenly referred to Greenland as Iceland and kept describing it as “a piece of ice” and once even called it a “big, beautiful piece of ice.” It is true that most of Greenland is covered by a thick ice sheet. But Greenlanders find it offensive that Mr. Trump rarely mentions the 57,000 people living on the island, who are mostly Indigenous. On Wednesday night, Aaja Chemnitz, one of the two Greenlandic members of the Danish parliament and a major political figure in Greenland, said it was wrong that Mr. Trump was negotiating with NATO about Greenland without Greenland at the table.
“What we are witnessing these days in statements from Trump is completely absurd,” she said in a post that appeared on Facebook. “NATO has absolutely no mandate to negotiate anything whatsoever without us in Greenland.”
“Nothing about us, without us,” she said. “There is total confusion being created.”
Jeffrey Gettleman is an international correspondent based in London covering global events. He has worked for The Times for more than 20 years.
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