By Staff, Agencies

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, warned that any attack by the United States on a NATO ally would mean the end of both the military alliance and “post-second world war security”.

Fresh from his military operation in Venezuela, the US president said on Sunday the US needed Greenland “very badly” – renewing fears of a US invasion of the largely autonomous island, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of the Danish kingdom. Greenland’s foreign and security policy continues to be controlled by Copenhagen.

“If the United States decides to militarily attack another Nato country, then everything would stop – that includes Nato and therefore post-second world war security,” Frederiksen told Danish television network TV2.

Greenland’s strategic location between Europe and North America makes it a critical site for the US ballistic missile defense system. The island’s significant mineral resources also align with Washington’s ambition to reduce dependence on Chinese exports.

Frederiksen’s comments came after Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, made a bracingly direct statement in which he urged Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation” and accused the US of “completely and utterly unacceptable” rhetoric, declaring: “Enough is enough.”

“Threats, pressure and talk of annexation have no place between friends,” said Nielsen in a social media post. “That is not how you speak to a people who have shown responsibility, stability and loyalty time and again. Enough is enough. No more pressure. No more innuendo. No more fantasies about annexation.”

Speaking later at a press conference in the capital Nuuk, Nielsen sought to allay fears of an imminent US takeover.

“We are not in the situation where we are thinking that a takeover of the country might happen overnight,” Nielsen said, speaking via a translator. “You cannot compare Greenland to Venezuela. We are a democratic country.”

Frederiksen said her government was doing all that was possible to prevent an attack on Greenland and accused the US of applying “unacceptable pressure”, describing it as an “unreasonable attack on the world community”.

“You cannot go in and take over part of another country’s territory,” she told Danish broadcaster DR, adding: “If the US chooses to attack another NATO country, everything will stop.

“I have said from the beginning that I unfortunately believe the American president is serious about this. I have also made it very clear where Denmark stands. And Greenland has repeatedly said that it does not want to be part of the USA.”

She had been “very clear” to Trump, in public and private, said Frederiksen, adding that she would “do everything … to fight for the fundamental democratic values and the international community we have built.”

Nielsen and Frederiksen were backed by the EU, which on Monday said it would not stop defending the principle of territorial integrity, particularly when it came to a member of the 27-member bloc.

“The EU will continue to uphold the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” the EU’s lead foreign policy spokesperson, Anitta Hipper, told reporters. “These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them, all the more so if the territorial integrity of a member state of the European Union is questioned.”

But pressure is growing on Frederiksen, who faces a general election this year, to go beyond diplomacy and lay out more concrete plans for how Denmark would respond if Greenland were invaded.

Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament and representative of the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, said although she did not believe an invasion was imminent, Greenlanders should “prepare for the worst”.

“We should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. That’s the way I see it right now. We are in a situation that is concerning.” Chemnitz said Trump’s latest remarks were “the worst and most serious” of his threats to Greenland and marked the emergence of a “new world order”.

“Just a few months ago many of us were seeing the political world as we used to see it, which is that you can have a dialogue, you can have collaboration … and so on,” she said. “But the way that the US is talking about Greenland and trying to ‘collaborate with Greenland’, it’s a totally new world order that we are looking at.”

Chemnitz added: “The future of Greenland is completely up to us. I understand that he [Trump] might be interested in having Greenland, but Greenland is not interested in being part of the US.”