Berlin, Jan 15, (dpa/GNA) – German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, said on Thursday that if US President Donald Trump carries out his threat to take over Greenland, it would “have consequences for the alliance,” though he stopped short of saying it would destroy NATO.
Pistorius, speaking on a public broadcaster’s evening news programme, added that the timing of Germany and other countries’ deployment to the Arctic island in these days of heightened tensions over its fate was “a coincidence of timing.”
“It’s a coincidence in itself, because when we were planning it, we had no way of knowing, first, that the conversation would happen on Wednesday or how it would turn out,” he said.
On Wednesday talks in Washington with the foreign ministers of the US, Denmark and Greenland as well as with US Vice President JD Vance did not result in a resolution.
The question now is how to train on land together with other NATO forces, he said.
Pistorius said Germany’s participation in the exercise on the contested island is to show European members of NATO that his country stands “by our obligations. Something that, until a few years ago, we did not state clearly enough.”
GNA