US president tells business and political leaders in Davos his country needs ownership to defend ‘unsecured island’

Donald Trump has stepped up his demand to annex Greenland but said the US would not use force to seize it during a rambling, invective-laden speech at Davos where he once again lashed out at Europe’s political leaders.

The address to thousands of business and political leaders at the World Economic Form in the Swiss ski resort indicated that while the US president was renouncing the use of military force – for now at least – to wrest control of Greenland, he still intended to wield America’s economic and diplomatic power to bend European allies to his will.