Denmark, U.S. reach defense agreement

[December 19, 2023]  COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark has reached a defense agreement with the United States that will allow U.S. soldiers and military equipment to be based on Danish soil, the country's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Tuesday. 

The 10-year agreement was announced after the United States signed similar agreements with Finland and Sweden this month.

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen hold a press conference on defense cooperation with the United States, in the Hall of Mirrors in the State Ministry in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 19, 2023. Ritzau Scanpix/Emil Helms via REUTERS

"This means that American soldiers and equipment can be permanently stationed on Danish soil," Frederiksen told reporters at a press conference.

The agreement, which Denmark and the United States began negotiating in February last year, will be signed later this week and will enter into force when necessary legislation has been adopted about a year from now, Frederiksen said.

Finland on Monday signed a defense cooperation agreement with the United States to grant the U.S. military broad access across the Nordic country to the vicinity of its long border with Russia.

Sweden signed a similar agreement earlier in December, and Norway, which also shares a short border with Russia, in 2021 signed an agreement with the United States on how to regulate U.S. military activity on its soil.

(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, editing by Alex Richardson)

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