Denmark and Greenland have requested a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio following the Trump administration’s renewed efforts to acquire Greenland, a strategic Arctic island and Danish territory.

This development comes after the White House announced on Tuesday that military intervention remains an option, despite European leaders dismissing President Donald Trump’s proposal to annex Greenland for strategic purposes.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen earlier cautioned that such a takeover by the U.S. would effectively dismantle the NATO military alliance.

Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre, commented on Wednesday to The Associated Press, “The Nordics are not prone to making such statements lightly. However, President Trump’s aggressive rhetoric, which borders on threats and intimidation, poses a significant challenge to another ally by suggesting he could control or annex the territory.”

In a show of solidarity, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom joined Frederiksen in a statement on Tuesday, emphasizing that the mineral-rich island “belongs to its people.”

Their statement defended the sovereignty of Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark and thus part of NATO.

Trump has floated since his first term the idea of acquiring Greenland, arguing that the U.S. needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.

This weekend’s U.S. military action in Venezuela has heightened fears across Europe, and Trump and his advisers in recent days have reiterated the U.S. leader’s desire to take over the island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.

“It’s so strategic right now,” Trump told reporters Sunday.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, have requested the meeting with Rubio in the near future, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a sit-down were not successful, the statement said.

While most U.S. Republicans have supported Trump’s statement, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, the Democratic and Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, blasted Trump’s rhetoric in a statement Tuesday.

“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” the statement said. “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he spoke by phone Tuesday with Rubio, who dismissed the idea of a Venezuela-style operation in Greenland.

“In the United States, there is massive support for the country belonging to NATO – a membership that, from one day to the next, would be compromised by … any form of aggressiveness toward another member of NATO,” Barrot told France Inter radio Wednesday.

Asked if he has a plan in case Trump does claim Greenland, Barrot said he won’t engage in “fiction diplomacy.”