COPENHAGEN, Jan 18 — Denmark’s foreign minister is to visit fellow Nato members Norway, the UK and Sweden to discuss the alliance’s Arctic security strategy, his ministry announced today.
Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen will visit Oslo today, travel to London tomorrow and then to Stockholm on Thursday.
The diplomatic tour follows US President Donald Trump’s threat to punish eight countries—including the three Rasmussen is visiting—with tariffs over their opposition to his plan to seize control of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
Trump has accused Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland of playing a “very dangerous game” after they sent a few dozen troops to the island as part of a military drill.
“In an unstable and unpredictable world, Denmark needs close friends and allies,” Rasmussen stated in a press release.
“Our countries share the view that we all agree on the need to strengthen Nato’s role in the Arctic, and I look forward to discussing how to achieve this,” he said.
An extraordinary meeting of EU ambassadors has been called in Brussels for Sunday afternoon.
Denmark, “in cooperation with several European allies”, recently joined a declaration on Greenland stating that the mineral-rich island is part of Nato and that its security is a “shared responsibility” of alliance members, the ministry statement added.
Since his return to the White House for a second term, Trump has made no secret of his desire to annex Greenland, defending the strategy as necessary for national security and to ward off supposed Russian and Chinese advances in the Arctic. — AFP
