Nordic nations stand “in solidarity” with Denmark and Greenland amid US President Donald Trump’s threats to seize the autonomous Danish territory, Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Monday.
Trump has repeatedly said the US needs the strategically located, resource-rich Arctic island for security reasons, and has refused to rule out the use of force to secure it.
“You can be fully certain that we stand by you and by Denmark in solidarity,” Store told Greenland’s prime minister at a meeting of Nordic prime ministers in Turku, Finland.
“We will say this message everywhere, if it’s asked in Washington or Brussels or Beijing or everywhere else,” he said.
“The Arctic is a regulated area. The Law of the Sea applies, the responsibility of coastal states applies, and we will stand by any community that is feeling pressure on those values,” Store said.
Danish and Greenlandic leaders have insisted that the autonomous territory, where a majority are in favour of independence in the long term, must decide its own future, and have repeatedly said Washington “will never get Greenland”.
Trump’s threats to take over the island have sparked jitters in other parts of the far north, including in Iceland and Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.
In addition to Trump, Beijing and Moscow have also become increasingly active in the Arctic as climate change opens up sea routes.
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“Iceland is just below Greenland. We are a small country,” Iceland’s Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir said.
“It’s very important for us that there’s a strong message from this region that international law is abided by, and that might makes right doesn’t become the rule of law,” she said.