The White House and Denmark contradicted each other in public about what they had agreed to this week as President Trump continued to demand U.S. ownership of Greenland.

The meeting came one day after Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said at a news conference, "If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark."

Several European leaders have pushed back on U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments seeking an American takeover of Greenland.

President Donald Trump's renewed interest in Greenland comes days after the U.S. arrest and extraction of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro.

President Trump wants the matter settled before the end of his term, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The vast Arctic island is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the U.S. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his counterpart from Greenland, Vivian Motzfeldt, had been widely expected to meet on Wednesday with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, though the meeting hadn't officially been confirmed.