As the Report reports with reference to the Sunday Times newspaper, Tom Heim, who was the Danish Minister for Greenland from 1982 to 1987, said this.
According to him, according to the terms of the agreement concluded more than a century ago, if Denmark were to sell Greenland, it would have to grant Britain the right of pre-emption.
"If Trump tried to buy Greenland, he would have to ask London first. In 1917, the United Kingdom demanded that if Greenland was sold, Britain would have the right of first refusal," Heim notes.
The publication clarifies that the 1917 deal in question was part of an agreement between U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to purchase the Danish West Indies, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands. The United States bought them from Denmark for $25 million.
One businessman strongly advised Wilson to buy Greenland, but at first he did not want to, not seeing the value in this land. When he was finally convinced of the expediency of the purchase, Copenhagen did not want to include the transfer of this territory in the deal for the Danish West Indies. The Danish authorities also demanded written assurances from the United States that Greenland would forever remain Danish, and Wilson provided them.
"This means that the United States has officially recognized that Greenland is and always will be Danish. But Trump seems to have never heard of it," said the former Danish Minister for Greenland.
Recall that at the end of 2024, US President Donald Trump called it an "absolute necessity" for the United States to own Greenland, as he commented on his decision to appoint former US Ambassador to Sweden and businessman Ken Howery as the new American ambassador to Denmark.
Greenland was a colony of Denmark until 1953. It remains part of the kingdom, but in 2009 it gained autonomy with the possibility of self-government and independent choice in domestic politics. In 2019, a series of publications appeared in the media that Trump was considering buying Greenland
