Macron Will Visit Greenland This Month, Defying Trump
In a challenge to President's Trump's vow to take control of Greenland, President Emmanuel Macron of France will visit the enormous Arctic island on June 15 with the aim of 'contributing to the reinforcement of European sovereignty.'
The French presidency announced the visit on Saturday, saying that Mr. Macron had accepted an invitation from Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland's prime minister, and Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, with whom it said Mr. Macron would discuss 'security in the North Atlantic and the Arctic.'
Greenland, a semiautonomous island that is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally, has been thrust in recent months from a remote, uneventful existence to the center of a geostrategic storm by Mr. Trump's repeated demands that it become part of the United States, one way or another.
'I think there's a good possibility that we could do it without military force,' Mr. Trump told NBC in March, but added that he would not 'take anything off the table.'
Mr. Macron, who has seen in the various provocations directed at Europe by the Trump administration an opportunity for European assertion of its power, will be the first foreign head of state to go to Greenland since Mr. Trump embarked on his annexation campaign this year.
JD Vance, the American vice president, visited Greenland in March. The trip was drastically scaled back and confined to a remote military base after the threat of local protests.
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