Denmark says it is not seeking Nato Article 4 consultations over drones
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
People walking at Denmark's Aalborg Airport on Sept 25. The airport reopened on Sept 26 after being closed for the second night in a row due to suspected drone activity.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
- Drone incursions caused several Danish airports to close temporarily, raising security concerns.
- Denmark will not invoke Nato's Article 4, unlike Poland and Estonia recently, as the threat is not clear.
- Despite initial reports, Denmark denies attributing the drone activity to "state actors," and investigations continue.
AI generated
COPENHAGEN - Denmark has no plans to invoke Nato’s Article 4 clause on security consultations, its foreign minister said on Sept 26, after drone incursions shut down air traffic
Copenhagen Airport, the Nordic region’s busiest, closed for several hours
Five smaller airports, both civilian and military, were also shut temporarily
Article 4 of the Nato treaty states that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territory, political independence or security of any of them is threatened.
Denmark initially said it had not decided whether to invoke the clause. It had rarely been activated since Nato’s founding in 1949 until this month, when Poland and Estonia each invoked it due to incursions, respectively, by drones and Russian fighter jets.
“Article 4 has been activated nine times in Nato’s entire history, and twice recently in relation to Poland and Estonia, so we have no reason to do so,” Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters.
Latvia’s foreign minister said on Sept 25 that Denmark had told its Nato allies that “state actors” were responsible for the drones, but Mr Lokke on Sept 26 rejected this assertion, calling the claim that Denmark had said so
“We are not in the situation today where we can attribute what we have seen to anyone in particular,” Mr Lokke said.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Sept 23 the drone activity was a form of hybrid attack and linked it to Russia. Moscow denies being behind the drone incursions.
Highlighting Danes’ growing anxiety about drones, the country’s second-biggest airport, Billund, was briefly shut early on Sept 26
