By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Soren Jeppesen
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Denmark's foreign minister has summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen over Danish intelligence reports that U.S. citizens have been conducting covert influence operations in Greenland, the ministry said on Wednesday.
Public broadcaster DR cited unnamed sources as saying the government believed at least three U.S. nationals with ties to President Donald Trump's administration had been involved in influence operations aimed at promoting Greenland's secession from Denmark to the United States.
"We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark," Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a statement.
"It is therefore not surprising if we experience outside attempts to influence the future of the Kingdom in the time ahead," Rasmussen said.
Neither the broadcaster nor the ministry named the individuals flagged in the intelligence reports.
The U.S. embassy in Copenhagen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has said he wants the U.S. to take over Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory rich in minerals and strategically located in the Arctic, for reasons of national and international security, and has not ruled out the use of force to do so.
His proposal has been firmly rejected in both Copenhagen and Nuuk, Greenland's capital. While Trump also has since expressed respect for Greenland's right to determine its own future, his comments about potentially taking the territory by force have fuelled uncertainty among its 57,000 inhabitants.
COUNTERING U.S. AMBITIONS
At the same time, Denmark has sought to bolster its relations with Greenland, a former colony but now a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, rallying European allies to counterbalance U.S. ambitions in the region.
In a show of solidarity, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Greenland in June and was greeted by hundreds of locals. That contrasted with the reception received by U.S. Vice President JD Vance in March, when protests forced him to visit a remote U.S. air base and scrap plans for his wife to attend a dog sled race.
Denmark's national security and intelligence service, PET, said in a statement it considers "that Greenland, especially in the current situation, is a target for influence campaigns of various kinds".
"This could be done by exploiting existing or invented disagreements, for example, in connection with known single issues or by promoting or reinforcing certain views in Greenland regarding the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States or other countries with a special interest in Greenland," it said.
Trump has picked PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as the new U.S. ambassador to Denmark, but the U.S. mission in Copenhagen is currently led by Charge d'affaires Mark Stroh, it said on its website.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik;Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Helen Popper)
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