By Stine Jacobsen and Soren Jeppesen
COPENHAGEN, May 12 (Reuters) – Greenland’s prime minister said on Tuesday that increasing the U.S. military presence in the Arctic territory was part of ongoing negotiations with Washington, as the United States’ desire to own or control the territory remains alive.
President Donald Trump’s assertion that the U.S. must acquire or control Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, has sparked tension between Washington, Nuuk and Copenhagen, and more broadly within the NATO alliance.
“From the beginning, one of the issues has been that they don’t think we do enough in terms of national security and surveillance in our region, so security and more military presence in Greenland is part of the discussions,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told reporters in Copenhagen.
GREENLAND OPTIMISTIC ABOUT DEAL
Seeking to calm tensions, Greenland, Denmark and the U.S. earlier this year agreed to hold high-level diplomatic negotiations to resolve the crisis, although the outcome of those ongoing talks has yet to be presented.
“The desire is not gone and we need to make some kind of deal in that working group and I am positive that we can figure it out,” Nielsen said, referring to Trump’s interest in gaining control of Greenland.
The BBC on Tuesday reported that U.S. officials in the talks had signalled they aim to open three new bases in southern Greenland, with one source saying Washington had floated designating the facilities as U.S. sovereign territory.
“Right now we have a defence agreement with the United States where it’s already possible to have more bases,” Nielsen said, adding that the existing defence framework was one possible basis for any expansion but that other arrangements could be explored.
Greenland has repeatedly said it is open to wider military and business cooperation with the U.S., including on mineral resources, but that its sovereignty is non-negotiable.
The United States has one active base in Greenland, the Pituffik Space Base in the northwest, down from around 17 facilities in 1945 when thousands of U.S. personnel staffed facilities around the island.
General Gregory Guillot, head of the U.S. Northern Command, first disclosed the three-base plan in Senate testimony in March. Guillot was in Copenhagen last week, an Instagram post by the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen showed.
Two of the locations under consideration have been identified by local media as Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland and Kangerlussuaq in the southwest, both former U.S. bases with existing airstrips and port infrastructure. A third location has not been named.
The airport manager at Narsarsuaq confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. envoy from the embassy in Copenhagen visited recently to inspect the runway, harbour and whether the facilities could be reopened.
Sources have previously said the expansion is being negotiated under a 1951 U.S.-Danish defence agreement that gives Washington broad military access to Greenland. Experts say Denmark has little practical ability to block U.S. requests under the pact, which was last updated in 2004 to include Greenland as a signatory.
Trump envoy Jeff Landry is scheduled to visit Greenland next week to attend a business conference in the vast Arctic island of 57,000 people. He has not been confirmed to meet any Greenlandic politicians.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Soren Jeppesen, editing by Terje Solsvik, Rod Nickel)
