“We are negotiating but we don’t have an agreement.” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, put it that plainly on Tuesday, 12 May 2026, in a speech to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit.
He would not go into detail. “It’s difficult for me to be concrete about the conversations in the working group,” he said, “but we have taken some steps in the right direction.” He pointed to calmer rhetoric and a shift toward talking respectfully to each other.
What Washington wants
The United States already runs the Pituffik military base in northern Greenland. According to media reports, and to officials who spoke to the BBC, it now wants three new bases in the south of the territory. They would focus mainly on watching Russian and Chinese maritime activity in the stretch of the north Atlantic between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom, known as the GIUK Gap. One site would probably be Narsarsuaq, where a former US base once housed a small airport. Other sites would likely be places that already have airfields or ports, which are cheaper to upgrade than to build from scratch.
One source with knowledge of the talks said US officials had floated making the bases formally US sovereign territory. Nothing has been agreed, the sources said, and the final number of bases could change.
A 1951 defence pact, updated in 2004, already lets Washington raise troop levels and set up military installations on the island, provided it tells Denmark and Greenland in advance.
How the talks began
The negotiations grew out of a crisis. In January, President Donald Trump said the US should “own” Greenland to keep Russia or China from taking it, and that it could happen the “easy way” or the “hard way.” He later backed down from his threats to seize the island. Copenhagen and Nuuk then held a first meeting in Washington, and a working group was set up. By May it had met five times.
The BBC reported that the talks are led by Michael Needham, a senior State Department official, along with Denmark’s ambassador to the US, Jesper Moller Sorensen, and the Greenlandic diplomat Jacob Isbosethsen. Needham’s task, the BBC said, is a deal that satisfies Trump while respecting Denmark’s red lines on protecting its borders. The White House confirmed high-level talks but declined to discuss details. Denmark’s foreign ministry said only: “There is an ongoing diplomatic track with the United States.”
Nielsen stressed what Greenland wants. “We have been ready from the beginning and said we are ready to do more, take more responsibility,” he said. “Our only demand is respect.”
Denmark itself has had no government since a general election on March 24 that gave neither the left nor the right bloc a majority.
Sources
- Greenland PM confirms progress in talks to open new US bases in Greenland
- Progress in talks with US but no deal yet, says Greenland's PM
