Denmark has welcomed changes to a Greenland trip by US Vice-President JD Vance and his wife Usha, which has been reduced to a visit of just a US space base.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Usha Vance would spend several days in Greenland, visiting the capital Nuuk and attending cultural events like a popular annual dogsled race.
The White House said on Tuesday that JD Vance would join his wife in Greenland but that the couple would only spend a day there visiting the US Pituffik Space Base, on the north-western coast.
US President Donald Trump has continued his threats of taking over Greenland, a Danish semi-autonomous territory, saying on Wednesday: “We’re going to have to have it”.
“We need Greenland for international safety and security,” Trump added.
Although JD Vance will become the highest-ranking US official to visit Greenland, a visit to a US base is less controversial than the original plan for his wife’s visit, which Greenland’s acting head of government Mute Egede called a “provocation”.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Wednesday that the decision was “very positive” and that Denmark had “nothing against” the Americans visiting their own base.
Rasmussen also said it was a “masterful spin in many ways, to make [the US] look like they’re escalating when they’re actually deescalating.”
The revised programme will also likely reduce the risk of the Vances being met with protests by local residents.
In recent weeks hundreds of people have taken part in demonstrations against the US, with some holding placards reading “Respect international agreements” and “Yankee go home”.
Earlier in March, Greenland’s leading political parties issued a joint statement to condemn Trump’s “unacceptable behaviour”.
Outgoing Prime Minister Mute B Egede wrote on Facebook that his country would “never be the USA and we Greenlanders will never be Americans… Don’t keep treating us with disrespect. Enough is enough.”
On Wednesday morning, Greenland media reported that several armoured cars which had arrived on the island in preparation for Usha Vance’s visit were being loaded back on an American military plane.
Greenland – the world’s biggest island, situated between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans – has been controlled by Denmark, nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away, for about 300 years.
It governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen. The US has long held a security interest and a military presence there since World War Two.
