COPENHAGEN: Negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States on the Danish autonomous territory are making progress but a deal has yet to be reached, Greenland’s prime minister said on Tuesday (May 12).
The mineral-rich Arctic island is coveted by US President Donald Trump.
“We are negotiating but we don’t have an agreement,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a speech to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit.
“It’s difficult for me to be concrete about the conversations in the working group but we have taken some steps in the right direction,” he said.
The United States, which already has the Pituffik military base in northern Greenland, wants to open three new bases in the south of the territory, according to media reports.
A 1951 defence pact, updated in 2004, already allows Washington to ramp up troop deployments and military installations on the island, provided it informs Denmark and Greenland in advance.
In January, Trump backed down from his repeated threats to seize Greenland, after which Copenhagen and Nuuk held a first meeting in Washington.
A working group was then established to discuss the US position.
Trump has repeatedly argued the US needs to control Greenland for reasons of national security and has warned that if it doesn’t take the vast Arctic island, China or Russia will.
“We have been ready from the beginning and said we are ready to do more, take more responsibility … in terms of national or international security,” Nielsen said on Tuesday.
“Our only demand is respect.”
The negotiations are being led by senior US State Department official Michael Needham, Danish ambassador to the US Jesper Moller Sorensen and Greenlandic diplomat Jacob Isbosethsen, according to the BBC.
The working group has held five meetings since January, it said.
Denmark has been without a government since a general election on Mar 24 that failed to give either the left or right bloc a majority.