The US is still muscling in on Greenland, posing questions if undefended Iceland could be next, or if Russia has designs on demilitarised Svalbard and the Åland Islands.
US president Donald Trump’s special envoy on Greenland, senator Jeff Landry, came for a four-day trip to Nuuk this week, signalling a renewal of White House interest in the Danish island.
Landry met Greenland’s prime minister on Monday and was attending the Future Greenland business forum on Tuesday (19 May) and Wednesday.
The American delegation included his wife, a doctor called Joseph Griffin, five US diplomats, and seven executives from construction firm UIC, the Greenland Energy Company, and Pt Capital.
The Future Greenland forum also hosted EU commissioner Jozef Síkela and nine EU officials, as well as British, Canadian, Danish, French, German, Icelandic, and Latvian diplomats.
But whatever the US and EU delegations might discuss, Landry delivered maximalist demands to Greenland’s prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
There was “no sign … anything has changed” compared to Trump’s threats, last issued in January, to take control of Greenland, said Nielsen on Monday.
Greenland’s foreign minister, Mute Egede, said: “We have our red line. The Americans’ starting point has not changed either”.
The Nuuk business forum aside, Danish, Greenlandic, and US officials are also holding talks on Greenland’s future in a ‘working group’, launched by Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen in Washington on 14 January.
“There is an ongoing diplomatic track with the United States. The ministry of foreign affairs will not go into further detail at this time,” the Danish foreign ministry told EUobserver on Tuesday.
The Norwegian foreign ministry said: “It is a positive sign that the dialogue continues”.
But it added: “We support the Kingdom of Denmark, and we uphold international law, including sovereignty, and territorial integrity”.
And according to The New York Times, the US is pushing for de facto control of Greenland.
It aims to reopen two sovereign military bases on the south of the island, give its troops a permanent right to stay, and to have veto power on future Chinese or Russian investments, the report said.
For his part, the US doctor, Griffin, put his foot in his mouth in Nuuk by saying he was there to check Greenland’s “medical needs” on Trump’s behalf.