Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned Friday that a decision on who owns Greenland doesn’t belong to U.S. President Donald Trump.
“The future of Greenland is a decision for Greenland and for the Kingdom of Denmark,” Carney told journalists at a press conference in Beijing following talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Carney urged NATO allies including the U.S. to “respect their commitments” as he stressed Canada’s support for Danish sovereignty over the strategically vital Arctic island, which Trump has threatened to seize.
“We are NATO partners with Denmark, and so our full partnership stands,” Carney said in his first remarks on the intensifying diplomatic brouhaha. “Our obligations on Article 5, Article 2 of NATO stand, and we stand full-square behind those.”
The issue of Greenland has come to the fore again thanks to Trump’s escalating rhetoric on U.S. interests in the Arctic, which has sharpened tensions between Washington and the EU.
Denmark and several allies announced this week that they would step up their military presence in Greenland.
A day after Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers held talks with senior U.S. officials in Washington, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU has “doubled down on investments and supporting Greenland” and that the bloc would “continue our work on Arctic security with our allies, our partners, including the United States.”
Carney said Greenland and Arctic sovereignty also featured in his discussions with Xi, adding that he “found much alignment of views in that regard.”
Ferdinand Knapp contributed to this report.



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