Greenland’s prime minister says island isn’t for sale as Trump seeks control ‘one way or the other’
Greenland’s prime minister has a message for President Donald Trump: “Greenland is ours,” AP reports.
Múte Bourup Egede made the statement on Facebook Wednesday, just hours after Trump declared in his State of the Union address to Congress that he intends to gain control of Greenland “one way or the other.”
“Kalaallit Nunaat is ours,” Egede said in the post, using the Greenlandic name for his country.
“We don’t want to be Americans, nor Danes; We are Kalaallit. The Americans and their leader must understand that. We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland,” he said. The post ended with a clenched fist emoji and a Greenlandic flag.
On the streets of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, where the temperature was 4 degrees blow zero (minus 20 Celsius) at midday Wednesday and the bright sunshine reflected blindingly off a layer of fresh-fallen snow, people are taking Trump’s designs on their country seriously.
Since taking office six weeks ago, Trump has repeatedly expressed his interest in Greenland, a huge mineral-rich island that sits along strategic sea lanes in the North Atlantic. Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark with a population of about 56,000 people, lies off the northeastern coast of Canada, closer to Washington, D.C., than to Copenhagen.
Trump made a direct appeal to Greenlanders in his speech to Congress, just a week before the country’s voters cast their ballots in parliamentary elections.
“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” Trump said.
