President Donald Trump said on Thursday (Jan 22) he had secured total and permanent US access to Greenland in a deal with Nato, whose head said allies would have to step up their commitment to Arctic security to ward off threats from Russia and China. News of a framework deal came as Trump backed off tariff threats against Europe and ruled out taking Greenland by force, bringing a degree of respite in what was brewing to be the biggest rupture in transatlantic ties in decades. Trump’s U-turn triggered a rebound in European markets and a return toward record highs for Wall Street’s main indexes, but also raised questions about how much damage had already been done to transatlantic ties and business confidence.
Details of any agreement were unclear and Denmark insisted its sovereignty over the island was not up for discussion. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc’s US relations had “taken a big blow” in the past week, as EU leaders met for an emergency summit. Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen welcomed Trump’s comments but said he was still in the dark on many aspects.
“I don’t know what there is in the agreement, or the deal, about my country,” he told reporters in the capital Nuuk. “We are ready to discuss a lot of things and we are ready to negotiate a better partnership and so on. But sovereignty is a red line,” he said, when asked about reports that Trump was seeking control of areas around US military bases in Greenland as part of a wider deal.
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“We cannot cross the red lines. We have to respect our territorial integrity. We have to respect international law and sovereignty.” Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said a new deal was being negotiated that would be “much more generous to the United States, so much more generous.” He skirted questions on sovereignty, but said: “We have to have the ability to do exactly what we want to do.” Earlier Trump told Fox Business Network the deal would essentially bring “total access” for the United States.
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