Greenland | Pakistan

The White House said on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump is discussing options for acquiring Greenland, including potential use of the military, in a revival of his ambition to control the strategic island despite European objections. Trump sees acquiring Greenland as a US national security priority necessary to “deter our adversaries in the Arctic region”, the White House said in a statement. “The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilising the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the White House said. Greenland has repeatedly said it does not want to be part of the United States. Leaders from major European powers and Canada rallied behind the Arctic territory on Tuesday, saying it belongs to its people. A US military seizure of Greenland from a longtime ally, Denmark, would send shock waves through the Nato alliance and deepen the divide between Trump and European leaders. The strong ...

A group of European leaders on Tuesday underlined their support for Denmark after US President Donald Trump again voiced designs on its autonomous Arctic territory of Greenland. The leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain as well as Denmark said that sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders were “universal principles, and we will not stop defending them”. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears about Trump’s designs on Greenland, which has untapped rare earth deposits and could be a vital player as polar ice melts, opening up new shipping routes. Greenland is on the shortest route for missiles between Russia and the United States, and Washington already has a military base there. With the situation in Venezuela more pressing, Trump quipped on Sunday that “we’ll worry about Greenland in about two months”. The European leaders’ joint statement said: “Arctic security remains a key priority for Europe and it is critical for international ...

Greenland’s leader declared “enough is enough”, and Denmark’s allies in Europe affirmed that the Arctic island’s future must be determined by its people, rebuffing renewed remarks by US President Donald Trump about acquiring the vast territory. Trump spoke a day after the US special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a stunning raid, with Trump stating that Washington intended to oversee governance of the oil-rich Latin American country. The US operation rekindled concerns in Denmark that Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, might face a similar scenario. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to take over Greenland, an ambition first voiced in 2019 during his first presidency. On Sunday, he told The Atlantic magazine in an interview: “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defence.” Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One early on Monday, Trump said he would revisit the topic in a few weeks. “Threats, pressure, and talk of annexation have no place between friends,” Greenlan...

Greenland’s ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the past average during a May heatwave that also hit Iceland, the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA) said in a report Wednesday. The Arctic region is on the frontline of global warming, heating up four times faster than the rest of the planet since 1979, according to a 2022 study in scientific journal Nature. “The melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet by, from a preliminary analysis, a factor of 17… means the Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise is higher than it would have otherwise been without this heat wave,” one of the authors of the report, Friederike Otto, associate professor in climate science at the Imperial College London, told reporters. “Without climate change this would have been impossible,” she said. In Iceland, the temperature exceeded 26 degrees Celsius on May 15, unprecedented for that time of year on the subarctic island. “Temperatures over Iceland as observed this May are record-breaking, more than 13 degrees...