Danish officials’ requests for information regarding Danish intelligence reports that US citizens have been running covert influencing operations in Greenland have been met with Danish authorities’ summons for discussions, according to the Danish ministry of foreign affairs.
After Denmark’s top national broadcaster reported that the government believed that at least three people with connections to Donald Trump’s administration were engaging in covert influence operations to promote Greenland’s separation from Denmark to the United States, the diplomat was summoned on Wednesday.
“We are aware that foreign actors are still showing an interest in Greenland and its position within the Danish Kingdom. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us if we come across outside attempts to influence the Kingdom’s future in the near future,” said Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
He continued, adding that he had “asked the Foreign Ministry to summon the US charge d’affaires for a meeting at the ministry,” “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom will obviously be unacceptable.”
Trump has repeatedly stated that the US needs the strategically located, resource-rich island semiautonomous Danish territory for security reasons and has refrained from imposing any restrictions on using force to secure it since returning to the White House in January.
According to a poll conducted in January, the majority of Greenlanders want to secede from Denmark but not the United States.
Denmark has refocused its relations with Greenland, a former colony that is now a part of the Danish Kingdom, to win support from Europe in the wake of Trump’s proposal.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland in June, where he showed his country’s solidarity to the people. That contrasted with the remarks made by US Vice President JD Vance in March, when he was forced to visit a far-off US airbase and scrap plans for his wife to compete in a dogsled race.
In a statement, Denmark’s national security and intelligence service, PET, stated that “Greenland is a target for influence campaigns of various kinds, particularly in the current situation.”
“This could be accomplished by exploiting existing or invented disagreements, such as those arising from well-known single issues, or by promoting or strengthening certain views in Greenland regarding the United States and other nations with a special interest in Greenland,” it said.
Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, has previously called for more US-led Arctic defense cooperation, and she categorically rejects Washington’s desire to annex the area.
Source: Aljazeera
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