Copenhagen, Jan 13: Denmark’s foreign minister said Tuesday that he and his Greenlandic counterpart would meet with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump has been talking up the idea of buying or annexing the Arctic territory for years, and further stoked tensions on Sunday by saying that the United States would take the territory “one way or the other”.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters in Copenhagen that he and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt had requested a meeting with Rubio, and Vance had asked to “take part in that meeting and will host it.”
“Our reason for requesting the meeting has been to move the entire discussion… into a meeting room, where you can look each other in the eye and talk through these issues,” Lokke said following a foreign policy meeting in Denmark’s parliament.
Meanwhile Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said he would be meeting with NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday to discuss Arctic security, also together with Motzfeldt.
Rutte said Monday that the alliance was working on “the next steps” to bolster Arctic security.
Diplomats at NATO say some alliance members have floated the idea of launching a new mission in the region, though no concrete proposals are yet on the table.
