Denmark has sent additional troops to Greenland amid United States President Donald Trump’s threats to take control of the self-governing Danish
territory.
The chief of the Royal Danish Army, Peter Boysen, and a “substantial contribution” of soldiers landed in Kangerlussuaq in western Greenland on Monday evening, public
broadcaster DR and other Danish media reported.
Public broadcaster TV2 reported that 58 Danish troops landed in the Arctic territory,
joining about 60 others dispatched earlier to participate in ongoing multinational military
exercises, dubbed Operation Arctic Endurance. Denmark’s Ministry of Defence and the
Danish Armed Forces did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The deployment came hours after Trump declined to rule out using military force to take control of the vast, mineral-rich Arctic territory, which the US president claims isvital to Washington’s security. In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Trump replied, “no comment”, in response to a question about whether he could seize the island by force.
Trump’s remarks came after he told Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Storer in a text message over the weekend that he no longer felt obliged to “think purely of Peace” after not being awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Denmark has expressed openness to a beefed-up US military presence in Greenland, but has repeatedly said the territory is not for sale and that any move to take the island by force would spell the end of NATO. Trump’s insistence that Greenland must be brought under US control has brought US European relations to their lowest ebb in decades and raised fears about the potential disintegration of the transatlantic security alliance, whose 32 members include both the US and Denmark.
Credit: aljazeera.com
