The head of British diplomacy David Lammy refused on Thursday to “condemn” the statements of American President-elect Donald Trump who reiterated on Tuesday his expansionist aims on the Panama Canal and Greenland.
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“I do not aim to condemn our closest ally,” declared the British minister, interviewed on the Sky News channel, while assuring on the BBC that these annexations mentioned by Trump were “not going to happen”.
“I try to interpret what is behind” these statements, he said.
Donald Trump “raises concerns about Russia and China in the Arctic, which concern the national economic security” of the United States, and which are “legitimate questions”, he added.
London thus stands out from some of its European neighbors such as Paris and Berlin, who have strongly condemned Donald Trump’s expansionist remarks.
-During a press conference on Tuesday, Donald Trump refused to rule out the use of force to annex this autonomous territory of Denmark.
He had previously declared that control of Greenland was “an absolute necessity” for “national security and freedom across the world”, at a time when rivalries with China and Russia in the region are increasing due to its strategic importance and its supposed mineral resources.
The American billionaire has also expressed expansionist aims on the Panama Canal.
“Let’s be serious: this is not going to happen. Because no NATO country has gone to war since the creation of the Alliance,” David Lammy said on the BBC.
“We have known since Donald Trump’s first term that the intensity of his speech and the unpredictability of what he says can sometimes be destabilizing,” he admitted, however.
Asked about European reactions to Donald Trump’s comments, David Lammy stressed that Germany was “in the middle of an election cycle, and that a lot of things would be said in the coming weeks.”
