US President Donald Trump, who wants to take over Greenland, is very erratic, the island’s premier said on Monday, the eve of the self-governing Danish territory’s legislative elections.
“There is a world order that is faltering on many fronts — and a president of the United States who is very unpredictable — in such a way that makes people feel insecure,” Prime Minister Mute Egede told Danish public radio DR.
In a speech to the US Congress last week, Trump reiterated his designs, arguing the US needed the vast Arctic island for reasons of national and international security and saying he expected to get it “one way or the other”.
Determining a timeline for Greenland’s independence from Denmark has dominated the territory’s election campaign.
In a post addressing Greenlanders on his social media platform Truth Social late on Sunday, Trump said the US was “ready to INVEST BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to create new jobs and MAKE YOU RICH”.
“And, if you so choose, we welcome you to be a part of the Greatest Nation anywhere in the World, the United States of America!” he wrote.
Aaja Chemnitz — one of two Greenland representatives in the Danish parliament and a member of the prime minister’s left-green Inuit Ataqatigiit party — accused Trump of “inadmissible” election interference.
“It’s pretty desperate to make such a statement on the eve of an election in Greenland,” she said.
“As a foreign power, you’re not supposed to interfere.”
– ‘Respect’ –
In his interview with DR, conducted before Trump published his latest post, Egede said the US president’s recent behaviour had only served to push Greenlanders away.
“We deserve to be treated with respect and I don’t think the American president has done that lately since he took office,” Egede said.
“The recent things that the American president has done mean that you don’t want to get as close to (the US) as you might have wanted in the past,” he added.
In large part, Greenland’s economy is currently dependent on the fisheries sector and Danish subsidies. But Egede stressed it was already diversifying through tourism, mining and green energy generation.
He said he saw Greenland’s future as “within the Western alliance”.
“There are some security and defence policy issues where we need to ally ourselves with other countries with which we are already in alliance,” he said.
Egede said an independent Greenland in an alliance with Denmark and its other territory, the Faroe Islands, through a new, updated agreement “might be a possibility”.
The day after Trump’s speech to Congress, Egede wrote on Facebook that the 57,000 people of Greenland “don’t want to be Americans, or Danes either”.
“We are Greenlanders.”
“The Americans and their leader must understand that.”