WASHINGTON: Technical talks between the US, Denmark and Greenland over hatching an Arctic security deal are now underway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland agreed to create a working group aimed at addressing differences with the US during a Washington meeting earlier this month with Vice President JD Vance and Rubio.
The group was created after President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the US to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, in the name of countering threats from Russia and China — calls that Greenland, Denmark and European allies forcefully rejected.
“It begins today and it will be a regular process,” Rubio said of the working group, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We’re going to try to do it in a way that isn’t like a media circus every time these conversations happen, because we think that creates more flexibility on both sides to arrive at a positive outcome.”
The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday’s talks focused on “how we can address US concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom.” Red lines refers to the sovereignty of Greenland.
Trump’s renewed threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally, has roiled US-European relations.
Trump this month announced he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after a “framework” for a deal over access to the mineral-rich island was reached, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of the agreement have emerged.
After stiff pushback from European allies to his Greenland rhetoric, Trump also announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that he would take off the table the possibility of using American military force to acquire Greenland.
The president backed off his tariff threats and softened his language after Wall Street suffered its biggest losses in months over concerns that Trump’s Greenland ambitions could spur a trade war and fundamentally rupture NATO, a 32-member transatlantic military alliance that’s been a linchpin of post-World War II security.
Rubio on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland.
“We’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’re going to wind up in a good place, and I think you’ll hear the same from our colleagues in Europe very shortly,” Rubio said.
Rubio during Wednesday’s hearing also had a pointed exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, about Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland while at Davos.
“Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles,” Rubio said in responding to Kaine’s questions about Trump’s flub — taking a veiled dig at former President Joe Biden. “We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one.”
Rubio says technical talks with Denmark, Greenland officials over Arctic security have begun
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Rubio says technical talks with Denmark, Greenland officials over Arctic security have begun
- US Secretary of State on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland
US labels Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood as ‘terrorists’
- Designation comes after the US in January declared several other Muslim Brotherhood branches to be terrorist organizations
WASHINGTON: The United States said Monday it will label the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan as a terrorist organization and accused the group of receiving support from Iran.
The designation, which will be effective in a week, comes after the United States in January declared several other Muslim Brotherhood branches to be terrorist organizations, including in its historic base of Egypt.
“The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood uses unrestrained violence against civilians to undermine efforts to resolve the conflict in Sudan and advance its violent Islamist ideology,” the State Department said in a statement.
The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood “has contributed upwards of 20,000 fighters to the war in Sudan, many receiving training and other support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the elite ideological wing of Tehran’s military, the State Department said.
The State Department accused the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood of having “conducted mass executions of civilians in areas they captured.”
Iran, run by Shiite clerics, and the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization that historically had extensive social networks inside Egypt, both have supported Sudan’s army.
The army has been engaged for nearly three years in a brutal civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF), with the fighting claiming tens of thousands of lives, displacing more than 11 million people and plunging areas into famine-like conditions.
The United States last year said that the RSF has carried out acts of genocide with systematic killings and sexual violence against black Sudanese. The United States also said the army carried out war crimes.
Targeting the Muslim Brotherhood has also been a rallying cry in Washington for some conservative Republicans, in part over unfounded conspiracy theories that the group is trying to impose Islamic sharia law in the United States.
