Iceland summons U.S. ambassador over Trump's threat to take over Arctic nation

Iceland summons U.S. ambassador over Trump's threat to take over Arctic nation

Trump posted a map showing the U.S. flag over all of North America, Greenland and Iceland

U.S. President Donald Trump's latest map-making exercise has rattled the North Atlantic.

During a flurry of social media posts over the holiday long weekend, Trump posted a map coloured in the red, white and blue stars and stripes of the U.S. flag draped across all of North America — including Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Iceland, prompting Iceland to summon its ambassador.

The Truth Social post offered no explanation but recalled Trump's earlier talk of making Canada the 51st state and his repeated musings about taking over Greenland, Denmark's self-governing territory.

"It's disturbing and, in many ways, completely inappropriate," Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told the national broadcaster DR on Tuesday. "It's obviously a sign that the U.S. president still harbours some kind of maximalist vision in his own mind. We need to rein that in."

Iceland's Foreign Secretary Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir summoned U.S. Ambassador Billy Long to a meeting and said she made it clear that the post was unacceptable, national broadcaster RÚV said.

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The Arctic region has been on edge since Trump ramped up his rhetoric at the start of the year about U.S. control of Greenland.

His post came Monday as the European Union sought to reassure Greenland with the promise of a stronger partnership and hundreds of millions of euros in investment following Trump's repeated threats.

Iceland — just 290 kilometres away — became alarmed when Trump mistakenly named their country four times while speaking about his designs on Greenland.

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Iceland is a NATO member, but the gaffe led its left-leaning coalition government to move up a referendum, originally planned for next year, on whether the country should resume long-stalled negotiations to become a member of the EU.

Voters rejected the measure Aug. 30 that was promoted, in part, as an effort to strengthen ties with Europe to better insulate the country from geopolitical instability.

Thousands of Icelanders also signed a petition urging the prime minister to reject Long as ambassador after he made a crack earlier this year about Iceland becoming the 52nd U.S. state and making him governor. Long apologized and took up his post in Reykjavik last month.

Canadians react to Trump's threats

Trump has riled up Canada with frequent talk of it becoming a U.S. state, launching the ongoing trade war between the two countries and recently renaming Lake Ontario as "Lake America."

More than 225,000 Canadians have signed a petition calling on the government to expel the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, over the threats.

Canada's former ambassador to the UN Bob Rae says it wouldn't do much good, as Hoekstra is "a direct affiliate of the Trump enterprise."

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"Look, we know what we're up against," he said in an interview with CBC's Andrew Nichols. "Yes, Trump has ambitions that go way beyond trade."

He says the administration's threats make it difficult to get the U.S. to refocus on the trade agreement.

"It is a sign of the profound disrespect in this administration for the Canadian people, for the Canadian government, and for our future as a country," Rae said. "We are dealing with people who don't believe we should exist."

Over the Labour Day weekend, the global map was not the only thing on Trump's mind, as he also suggested renaming the state of New Mexico "New America."