Danish minister meets US envoy over alleged Greenland espionage plot

Copenhagen (dpa) – Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen met with a senior US embassy official on Thursday to discuss an alleged espionage plot in Greenland, he told Denmark’s DR television station.

“We are a close ally of the US and therefore we cannot accept it when people start spying on each other,” Rasmussen told the broadcaster.

He added that the Foreign Ministry wanted to make it clear to the Americans that responsibility for internal affairs of the kingdom of Denmark lies with the kingdom itself.

Greenland is largely autonomous, but officially belongs to the kingdom of Denmark.

Following the meeting at the Foreign Ministry, Rasmussen said he had the impression that the chargé d’affaires of the US embassy, Jennifer Hall Godfrey, had taken the message seriously.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US government has asked its intelligence services to find out more about the independence movement in Greenland, as well as how Greenlanders and Danes feel about the US mining raw materials on the island.

Rasmussen said the accuracy of this information was not confirmed to him at the meeting.

Earlier on Thursday, the foreign minister told DR that the United States was apparently trying to see if it could drive a wedge between the countries. “That is not the kind of cooperation we want,” he said.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his interest in taking control of resource-rich Greenland in recent months, citing national and international security.

Both Denmark and Greenland have consistently rejected Trump’s ambitions and emphasized that the island’s people will decide their own future.

The post of US ambassador to Denmark has been vacant since Trump took office in January. Trump’s candidate for the post, Kenneth Howery, has yet to be confirmed by the US Senate. Until then, Hall Godfrey is heading the US embassy in the Danish capital.