Posted on 09/24/2002 5:46:00 PM PDT by knighthawk
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The United States will return to Denmark a section of the U.S. air base at Thule in northern Greenland, the Danish government announced Tuesday.
For decades Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, has bristled at U.S. military restrictions on the so-called Dundas area, which is within the base but no longer used.
The local government of Premier Jonathan Motzfeldt wants to give the area back to the Inuit population who consider it an important hunting region.
NATO-member Denmark handles the foreign and defense policy of the world's largest island. Thule is 310 miles south of the North Pole.
In 1951, Denmark and the United States signed a defense agreement setting up four rent-free bases in Greenland. All the bases except for Thule have since been shut down.
When the Thule base was created in 1953, the Dundas area was incorporated as part of a security perimeter and declared a military zone.
The agreement was brokered Monday and made public Tuesday. Details, including the size of the portion to be returned to Denmark, were not announced.
A formal text is to be signed later this year in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.
We skirted the coast one time on a clear day. All I could see was innumerable icebergs and sheer cliffs rising to an endlessly white landscape. The quintessence of desolation.
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