DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Thursday he wants a plan to bolster Arctic security to be ready by a NATO summit in Turkey in July after the United States announced a framework deal to de-escalate a row over Greenland’s future.
Earlier, President Donald Trump said he had secured total and permanent U.S. access to Greenland in a deal with NATO, whose head said allies would have to step up their commitment to Arctic security to ward off threats from Russia and China.
The deal came as Trump dropped threats to impose tariffs on eight European allies over their stance on Greenland and ruled out taking the vast, mineral-rich island by force.
Stubb said he wanted a package of measures to be put together to boost Arctic security that would be “not dissimilar” to a deal agreed in The Hague last June, when NATO leaders backed a big rise in defence spending, as demanded by Trump.
“In an ideal world, we would have something ready by the NATO summit in Ankara,” Stubb told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Stubb said that a more robust Arctic security architecture should draw on closer cooperation between NATO’s Scandinavian members – Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland – plus the United States and Canada.
Trump’s threat last weekend to impose tariffs on European countries that opposed his ambition to acquire Greenland has rattled European capitals, and EU leaders are meeting in Brussels later on Thursday for emergency talks on the issue.
Stubb said he was confident that the EU leaders would maintain a united front on Greenland, and he underlined that it was especially important for the views of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to be heard.
Greenland is an autonomous region of the kingdom of Denmark.
Trump has argued that only the U.S. can ensure the security of Greenland in the face of what he says are Chinese and Russian ambitions in the Arctic. But his bellicose approach has threatened to blow apart the NATO alliance and reignite a trade war with Europe.
(Reporting by Dave Graham;Editing by Alison Williams and Gareth Jones)
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