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Irish deputy premier Simon Harris defended the EU's response to US threats to annex Greenland, stating that Donald Trump "backed down, quite frankly" as a result.Mr Harris said Ireland will not take part in Mr Trump's 'Board of Peace', raising concerns about the "oxymoron" of Mr Trump's having invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to participate in the body.Mr Harris said: "The UN is the way we advance multilateralism."

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00:00He can go into Venezuela, he can take out Maduro, he can say he's going to take over Greenland,
00:04and yet the European Union are not exactly being very strong.
00:09I have to reject that assertion outright.
00:11I'm not sure you could find a European Prime Minister, President or country
00:15that didn't condemn outright, as Ireland did.
00:18Condemned it, but not very strongly.
00:19Well, condemned it and made it clear that if it was anything more than random musings,
00:22there'd be very significant economic responses.
00:25And we got to a point where the President of the United States
00:27backed down, quite frankly, and changed his position in real time.
00:31I think a couple of things.
00:32One, it shows the importance of not responding in a knee-jerk fashion to every true social post.
00:40And I'm not seeking to be overly critical of the opposition,
00:43but we did hear on the floor of the door this week,
00:45bring in retaliatory measures, use the ACI.
00:47I mean, thank God we didn't act in a knee-jerk manner,
00:49because actually acting calmly, collectively, working at a European level,
00:53avoided the worst coming to pass.
00:55But I certainly don't think, I think it would be foolish
00:58to presume that we can depend on this never happening again.
01:05I think Prime Minister Carney, I think, spoke for many people in Davos
01:09when he talked about the fact that there is now somewhat of a new world order,
01:13and the old international norms that we'd all been operating on for a generation and more
01:18is certainly tested at best.
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