Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will visit Greenland this week after the Trump administration ramps up its rhetoric about a takeover of the semiautonomous Danish territory.
Frederiksen will meet with the territory's new leader, Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
“It is important for me to visit and greet the future Chairman of the Government of Greenland as soon as possible. It has my deepest respect how the Greenlandic people and the Greenlandic politicians handle the great pressure that is on Greenland," Frederiksen said in a weekend statement announcing her travel, Wednesday through Friday.
"It is a situation that calls for unity across political parties. Across the countries in the Danish Realm. And on cooperation in a respectful and equal way," she added.
Frederiksen also is slated to meet with the Naalakkersuisut, Greenland’s chief executive body, amid President Trump’s vocal desires to annex Greenland, which is rich in raw minerals and natural resources, for U.S. security purposes.
“We need Greenland. And the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark. Denmark has to have us have Greenland,” Trump told reporters on March 26 in the Oval Office.
“And, you know, we’ll see what happens. But if we don’t have Greenland, we can’t have great international security,” he added.
The Arctic island elected its new leader last month. Nielsen became Greenland’s youngest prime minister after being sworn in on Friday, coinciding with Vice President Vance’s visit to the territory.
Nielsen, a former minister of industry and minerals, has vehemently opposed the Trump administration’s swipes at controlling Greenland.
“We do not belong to others. We decide our own future,” Nielsen wrote in a social media post Sunday.
However, Vance has other predictions.
“What we think is going to happen is that the Greenlanders are going to choose, through self-determination, to become independent of Denmark, and then we’re going to have conversations with the people of Greenland from there,” the vice president told reporters.
The White House has not only publicly shared its intentions but has also privately launched a research study for the allotted financial costs of providing government services for Greenland’s 58,000 residents as reported by the Washington Post.
The Danes subsidize services on the island at a rate of about $600 million every year.
The point is, “‘We’ll pay you more than Denmark does,’” said one official familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that remain in the works, according to the outlet.
