British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told parliament on Wednesday he would not give in to pressure from US President Donald Trump over the future of the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland.
“I will not yield, Britain will not yield on our principles and values about the future of Greenland under threats of tariffs, and that is my clear position,” he told lawmakers, adding he would host Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen in London on Thursday.
Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on Britain and other European countries for opposing his claims on Greenland.
Starmer was also taunted in parliament by opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch over Trump’s condemnation of his government’s Chagos Islands deal.
The Chagos agreement will see Britain hand the archipelago — some 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) northeast of Mauritius — to its former colony and pay to lease the US-UK military base there for a century.
Trump blasted it Tuesday on social media as an act of “great stupidity”.
Responding to the criticism, Starmer told MPs: “The words from President Trump were expressly intended to put pressure on me to yield on my principles. What he said about Chagos was literally in the same sentence as what he said about Greenland. That was his purpose.
“And the future of Greenland is a binary issue that is splitting the world at the moment, with material consequences. I’ve been clear and consistent in my position on the future of Greenland. The future is for Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone,” he said.
AFP
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