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COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s foreign minister said Tuesday that no country should be able to simply help themselves to another country, following US President Donald Trump’s renewed remarks about taking control of Greenland.
Trump, who took office on Monday, set off alarm bells in early January by refusing to rule out military intervention to bring the Panama Canal and Greenland — which is an autonomous Danish territory — under US control.
“Of course we can’t have a world order where countries, if they’re big enough, no matter what they’re called, can just help themselves to what they want,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters Tuesday.
While he didn’t mention Greenland in his inauguration speech on Monday, Trump was asked about it by reporters in the Oval Office afterwards.
“Greenland is a wonderful place, we need it for international security,” Trump responded.
“I’m sure that Denmark will come along — it’s costing them a lot of money to maintain it, to keep it,” he added.
Lokke said he was “satisfied” that Trump had not cited Greenland as a priority in his speech, but added that the “rhetoric” was the same.
“It doesn’t make me call off any crisis, because he said other things about expanding the American territory,” Lokke told Danish media.
Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede has insisted “that Greenland is not for sale” but that the territory was open to doing business with the US.
Among Danes, the omission of Greenland in the inauguration speech led to some relief.
“He didn’t mention Greenland or Denmark in his speech last night, so I think there’s room for diplomacy,” 68-year-old actor Donald Andersen told AFP.
On Monday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a post to Instagram that Europe would need to “navigate a new reality.”
While noting the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination, the head of government also stressed the need for Denmark to maintain its alliance with the US — which she described as Denmark’s most important since World War II.
A number of Danish party leaders were called to the prime minister’s office on Tuesday to be briefed on the situation.
“We have to recognize that the next four years will be difficult years,” Pia Olsen Dyhr, leader of the Green Left, told reporters after meeting with Frederiksen.

DAVOS: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Europe should develop a joint defense policy and be willing to increase spending to guarantee its own security from emerging threats.
His comments to the World Economic Forum in Davos came a day after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, who has demanded NATO members raise their defense spending and boasted he can end the war in Ukraine, without offering a clear roadmap.
Zelensky said Europe needed to be ready to stand on its own feet and must work to remain relevant as a “strong global” player and “indispensable” on the global stage.
“We need a united European security and defense policy, and all European countries must be willing to spend as much on security as is truly needed,” Zelensky argued in his address to the WEF.
“Europe must be able to guarantee peace and security for itself,” he added.
He evoked the Kremlin’s deployment of North Korean troops to western Russia to illustrate what he said were growing threats to European security.
“European leaders should remember this — battles involving North Korean soldiers are now happening in places geographically closer to Davos than to Pyongyang,” he said.
And he pointed to a recent pact between Russia and Iran boosting their economic and military cooperation, saying the accord was an example of a changing landscape that was a threat to Europe.
“Whom do they make such deals against? Against you, against all of us,” he said. “Such threats can only be countered together,” he added.
Zelensky also questioned whether Trump was committed to NATO and European security, claiming that Washington has openly indicated their security priorities lie in the Middle East and in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Will President Trump even notice Europe? Does he see NATO as necessary? And will he respect EU institutions?” Zelensky asked.