Yankees out

last updated 8 January 2015

Nuuk, Greenland

Greenland’s newly elected government said this week that it would press for more independence from Denmark and more control over international relations. Greenland (pop. 56,000) has been mostly autonomous since 1979, but Denmark still controls foreign and defense policy. The Inuit Brotherhood party, which now shares a governing coalition with a leftist party, said it would hold a referendum on full independence in 2005. It wants to scrap a 1951 Danish treaty that gave the U.S. a rent-free military base in Greenland. The Bush administration is considering upgrading the base as part of its plan to build a missile-defense shield.