Marco Rubio will meet with Danish officials to discuss Greenland. “Trump's intention has always been the same”
Marco Rubio. Photo credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty images / Profimedia
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that he will meet with Danish officials next week, following renewed US interest in taking over Greenland.
His statements come after the foreign minister of Greenland and the foreign minister of Denmark requested a meeting with the head of American diplomacy, reports CNN, quoted by News.ro.
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Echoing the White House's statement from earlier this week, Marco Rubio did not rule out the possibility of US military intervention to take over Greenland if President Donald Trump deems it necessary for America's national security, although he spoke in general terms.
“Every president always retains that option, I'm not referring to Greenland, but the global situation, if the president identifies a threat to the national security of the United States, every president retains the option to address it by military means,” Rubio said.
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“He's not the first American president to consider how we could buy Greenland”
But he added that Trump's intention had always been to buy Greenland, noting that he had clearly articulated that goal during his first term. “It's not something new, he talked about it in his first term. And he's not the first American president to examine or look at how we could acquire Greenland,” Rubio said, recalling that President Harry Truman also considered the idea.
Rubio said diplomats “always prefer to solve the problem in different ways.”
He then made a direct connection with Venezuela, saying that the Trump administration tried to solve the problem through diplomacy in that case as well. “We have tried repeatedly to reach an outcome that does not involve the intervention and arrest of an accused drug trafficker. Unfortunately, these attempts have not been successful,” Rubio said of Venezuela.
The American newspapers The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported Tuesday on sources that Marco Rubio told congressmen, at a closed-door briefing on the intervention in Venezuela, that Donald Trump has no intention of invading Greenland, but is making statements in this regard to induce Denmark to enter into negotiations to acquire it.
