BRUSSELS — Greenland’s mining minister has rejected U.S. attempts to carve up her island’s mineral resources, saying no external power should decide the fate of the Arctic territory’s vast natural wealth.
“Everything is on the table except [our] sovereignty,” Mineral Resources Minister Naaja Nathanielsen told POLITICO in an interview, two days after President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte held closed-door talks that the U.S. president claimed included a deal on the island’s resources.
Nathanielsen challenged their right to do this, saying her country was “not going to accept our future development of our mineral sector to be decided outside Greenland.”
Trump started the week threatening to impose massive tariffs on EU countries if they didn’t hand over Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, to the U.S., but backed down Wednesday after saying he had reached a “framework for a future deal” with Rutte.
