Vance: Gets much more with new Greenland agreement

TT

Published 07.29

 

US Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha Vance at the US military base in Greenland in March last year. Photo: Jim Watson/AP/TT

The US gets “far more” than they previously had with the new framework agreement on Greenland, claims JD Vance.

Denmark is lying if they claim they have not compromised and made concessions, according to the vice president.

In the conservative American talk show The Megyn Kelly Show, Vance talks about the meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland's Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt in Washington DC in January. After the meeting, Løkke Rasmussen stated that the parties “fundamentally disagreed”.

– We had a really good conversation. And it's funny, because the Europeans are so friendly in private and willing to make a lot of compromises, and then they attack us in public and say they don't want to cooperate with the Americans. Sorry, but that's just a lie, Vance now says.

US President Donald Trump announced in the days after the January meeting that the US and Denmark will renegotiate the defense agreement that the countries signed over Greenland in 1951.

- We all know that this situation will be resolved. I think there is a solution that is good for Europe, and most importantly, it is a solution that is good for the United States. But it is not true that they have not made compromises and concessions to the United States, says Vance.

However, the vice president does not provide any details about what the United States actually gets from the agreement.

The United States has long claimed that it "needs" Greenland to protect the Arctic and itself from Russia and China.

“If the United States is going to protect the entire world's missile defense system – primarily our own, but others will also benefit from it – then we also have to get something in return,” says Vance.