Europe digital editor
Getty PhotographsDenmark’s international minister has summoned the highest US diplomat in Copenhagen, following a report that Americans have been conducting covert operations in Greenland.
Denmark’s public broadcaster DR quoted sources as saying the goal was to infiltrate Greenland’s society and promote its secession from Denmark to the US, though it was unable to make clear who the lads have been working for.
Danish intelligence warned Greenland was being focused by “numerous sorts of affect campaigns”.
International Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen stated “any try and intervene within the inner affairs of the Kingdom [of Denmark] will after all be unacceptable”, and the US cost d’affaires had been summoned in that gentle.
The BBC has approached the US embassy for remark.
Nevertheless, US President Trump has stated a number of occasions he desires to annex Greenland, an autonomous a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and Vice-President JD Vance has accused Copenhagen of underinvesting within the territory.
On a go to to Greenland a couple of months in the past, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned the US that “you can’t annex one other nation”.
Denmark’s international minister stated in a press release to the BBC that the federal government was “conscious that international actors proceed to point out an curiosity in Greenland and its place within the Kingdom of Denmark”.
“It’s due to this fact not shocking if we expertise outdoors makes an attempt to affect the way forward for the Kingdom within the time forward,” he added.
Denmark is a member of Nato and the European Union and has lengthy seen the US as one in all its closest allies, and Danes have been shocked by Trump’s willpower to manage its semi-autonomous territory. The US president stated this yr he wouldn’t rule out seizing it by power.
Denmark’s PET safety and intelligence service stated in its evaluation that affect campaigns would goal to “create discord within the relationship between Denmark and Greenland”.
This might be carried out by exploiting “present or invented disagreements” both with “conventional, bodily affect brokers or by way of disinformation”, it added. PET stated it had strengthened its presence in Greenland and co-operation with its authorities.
The US at the moment has no ambassador in Copenhagen, so Rasmussen has summoned Mark Stroh, who as cost d’affaires is probably the most senior diplomat within the Danish capital.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen has already summoned the US cost d’affaires in Denmark this yr in response to a separate report in Could suggesting US spy businesses had been advised to focus their efforts on Greenland.
DR’s report on Wednesday gave particulars of a go to by one American to Greenland’s capital Nuuk, saying he was in search of to compile an inventory of Greenlanders who backed US makes an attempt to take over the island. The goal could be to attempt to recruit them for a secession motion, DR stated.
The sooner Could report within the Wall Road Journal additionally referred to studying extra about Greenland’s independence motion, in addition to attitudes to American mineral extraction.
On the time, US Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard didn’t deny the report however accused the Journal of “breaking the regulation and undermining our nation’s safety and democracy”.
