{"id":232869,"date":"2026-01-07T19:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/232869\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T19:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T19:46:08","slug":"marco-rubio-to-meet-danish-officials-as-greenland-crisis-escalates-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/232869\/","title":{"rendered":"Marco Rubio to meet Danish officials as Greenland crisis escalates \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says he plans to meet Danish officials next week to discuss Greenland, amid an escalating crisis within Nato over Donald Trump\u2019s threats to take over the Arctic territory.<\/p>\n

An urgent meeting had been requested by the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark, which has said that any invasion or seizure of the territory by its Nato ally would mark the end of the western military alliance and \u201cpost-second world war security\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Rubio, asked whether he would rule out military intervention in Greenland, told reporters in Washington: \u201cIf the president identifies a threat to the national security of the United States, every president retains the option to address it through military means.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a diplomat, which is what I am now, and what we work on, we always prefer to settle it in different ways. That included in Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0US \u2018has no right\u2019 to take over Greenland, Danish PM says after latest Trump threatsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI\u2019m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention. I\u2019m going to meet them next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

France said on Tuesday that it was working with allies on how to react if the US were to invade Greenland. The French foreign minister, Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot, said the subject would be discussed at a meeting with the German and Polish foreign ministers on Wednesday. \u201cWe want to take action, but we want to do so together with our European partners,\u201d he told France Inter radio.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump claimed on Wednesday that the US would not desert Nato in a backhanded social media post that also criticised the alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will always be there for Nato, even if they won\u2019t be there for us,\u201d he wrote on Truth Social. Russia and China would \u201chave zero fear\u201d of Nato without the US, he said. <\/p>\n

Addressing \u201call of those big Nato fans\u201d, he added: \u201cThey were at 2% GDP, and most weren\u2019t paying their bills, until I came along.\u201d<\/p>\n

After one of Mr Trump\u2019s leading aides said on Tuesday that the US may be willing to seize control of the Arctic territory by force, European leaders rallied around Denmark and Greenland with a rare rebuke to the White House, declaring that Greenland \u201cbelongs to its people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite this, on Tuesday night, the White House said Mr Trump and his team were looking at \u201ca range of options\u201d to acquire Greenland, including using the US military, which it said was \u201calways an option\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Mr Barrot said that in a phone call on Tuesday, Rubio, had told him that he had \u201cruled out the possibility of an invasion\u201d of Greenland. <\/p>\n

\u201cI myself was on the phone with the Secretary of State yesterday … he discarded the idea that what just happened in Venezuela could happen in Greenland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Why does Donald Trump want to take over Greenland?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Mr Trump has long-expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland. But in recent days, after the US military operation in Venezuela on Saturday, the Trump administration\u2019s rhetoric has ramped up to new heights, putting the survival of Nato into question.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday night, the Danish parliament held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the unprecedented situation.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump has claimed that Greenland is \u201cfull of Chinese and Russian ships\u201d and that Denmark is incapable of defending Greenland, which the president has said is vital for US national security.<\/p>\n

But Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister said after the extraordinary meeting that the US was giving a false representation of what was happening in Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe image that is being painted of Russian and Chinese ships right inside the Nuuk fiord and massive Chinese investments being made is not correct,\u201d he said. \u2013 The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says he plans to meet Danish officials next week to discuss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[114,969,1814,292,3024,42,20878,43,3026,3589,40,38,41,39,90],"class_list":["post-232869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-greenland","tag-headlines","tag-marco-rubio","tag-news","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organisation-nato","tag-russia","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}