Italy's Meloni hopes to attend Trump inauguration as she downplays his Greenland and Panama comments

ROME — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday she didn't believe President-elect Donald Trump actually intends to use military force to seize control of Greenland or the Panama Canal, saying she read his comments more as a warning to China and other global players to keep their hands off such strategically important interests. "I think we can exclude that the United States in the coming years will try to use force to annex territory that interests it," said Meloni, who travelled last weekend to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate and intends to attend his inauguration. Rather, she said, Trump's comments were "a message to some other big global players more than any hostile claim over these countries." She identified increased "Chinese protagonism" in the commercially important Panama Canal and resource-rich Greenland as being behind Trump's warning, and said she interpreted his words as part of a "long-distance debate between great powers." Meloni was speaking at an annual news conference during which she was peppered with questions about her relations with Trump and Elon Musk. She confirmed she hoped to attend Trump's inauguration Jan. 20, but was checking her agenda before confirming her presence. "If I can I will gladly participate," she said. Trump on Tuesday said he wouldn't rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland which he declared to be vital to American national security. Analysts say such rhetoric could embolden America's enemies by suggesting the U.S. is now OK with countries using force to redraw borders at a time when Russia is pressing forward with its invasion of Ukraine and China is threatening Taiwan, which it claims as its own territory. Meloni has been a firm supporter of Ukraine since Russia's invasion, and said she didn't think the Trump administration would abandon Kyiv. Trump had boasted during the U.S. presidential campaign that he could end the war in one day, raising questions about whether the United States will continue to be Ukraine's biggest and most important military backer. "If we're talking about peace today it's because Russia is a little bit bogged down in Ukraine, and it's bogged down thanks to the courage of course of the Ukrainian people, but also thanks to Western support," Meloni said. "Donald Trump understands this well." She said Trump had shown in his first administration he was able to use a diplomacy of deterrence, and said she expected he would do so again. "Frankly I don't see a disengagement and I don't read this in (Trump's) statements," Meloni said. Meloni's press conference came a day after her right-wing government scored a major political victory by welcoming home an Italian journalist who had been detained in Iran for three weeks. The case of Cecilia Sala had become intertwined with that of an Iranian engineer detained in Italy on a U.S. warrant. Mohammad Abedini is wanted by the United States in connection with a 2024 drone attack in Jordan that killed three American soldiers. Italian commentators had said Iran was holding Sala as a bargaining chip to secure the release of Abedini, and speculation swirled Thursday about what would happen to him now that Sala had returned home. Abedini remains in detention in a Milan prison, with a hearing Jan. 15 on his bid for house arrest pending the extradition process to the U.S. Meloni described a "diplomatic triangulation" with Iran and the United States as being key to securing Sala's release, confirming for the first time that Washington's interests in the case entered into the negotiations. She said she would have liked to have discussed the Abedini case further with President Joe Biden, who had been expected in Rome this weekend but canceled his trip at the last minute to monitor the response to the Los Angeles fires. "These talks have taken place and will continue," Meloni said. "It's very complex work and it's not something that ended yesterday." Regardless, the Abedini case is now awaiting an outcome before the Italian justice ministry, she said.