(WASHINGTON) — Second lady Usha Vance will be part of a delegation traveling to Greenland this week, after President Donald Trump’s repeated statements that the U.S. should own and control the semiautonomous Danish territory.
Vance’s office announced the trip on Sunday, describing it as one dedicated to learning about Greenlandic culture with stops at historical sties and its national dogsled race.
But White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will be joining her, the National Security Council confirmed to ABC News.
“The U.S. has a vested security interest in the Arctic region and it should not be a surprise the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Energy are visiting a U.S. Space Base to get first-hand briefings from our service members on the ground,” National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede, in a statement to Greenland’s Sermitsiaq newspaper, called the upcoming visit part of a “very aggressive American pressure against the Greenlandic community” and called for the international community to step in to rebuke it.
Trump reintroduced his first-term suggestion for U.S. ownership of Greenland, the world’s largest island and a semiautonomous territory within Denmark, during the presidential transition. It again prompted Greenland officials to emphasize the island territory is not for sale.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., visited Greenland in early January, weeks before the inauguration. Trump Jr. said it was a personal visit and that he was not meeting with officials, though the president still celebrated it and alluded to a “deal” that he said “must happen.”
At one point, he notably declined to rule out military force to acquire Greenland.
Trump officials have pointed to Greenland as a key interest for national security as China and Russia ramp up activity in the Arctic. Greenland is also rich in valuable minerals, including rare earth minerals — the accession of which has become part of Trump’s foreign policy agenda.
In his joint address to Congress earlier this month, Trump said his administration needed it for “international world security.”
“And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump said.
Trump’s interest in Greenland comes as he’s pushed similar land grabs of Canada and the Panama Canal. Amid a trade war with Canada, Trump has called for America’s northern ally to become the 51st state, though his nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Canada has noted that it’s a sovereign state.
Ahead of her visit to Greenland on Thursday, second lady Vance released a video saying she was going to “celebrate the long history of mutual respect and cooperation between our nations and to express hope that our relationship will only grow stronger in the coming years.”
The National Security Council said Waltz and Wright “also look forward to experiencing Greenland’s famous hospitality and are confident that this visit presents an opportunity to build on partnerships that respects Greenland’s self-determination and advances economic cooperation.
“This is a visit to learn about Greenland, its culture, history, and people and to attend a dogsled race the United States is proud to sponsor, plain and simple,” the National Security Council said in its statement.
But Greenland’s prime minister, in a Facebook post, said Vance’s trip “cannot be seen only as a private visit.”
Egede added, “It should also be said in a bold way that our integrity and democracy must be respected, without any external disturbance.”
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
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