A US takeover of Greenland is not in the island's interests, Denmark's foreign minister said Friday, after his US counterpart warned President Donald Trump's talk of buying the territory was "not a joke".
"It's not a joke either when we say that Greenland shall of course not become an American possession," Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told public broadcaster DR.
"It is not in the interests of the Kingdom of Denmark", which includes Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, he said.
"Nor is it in Greenland's, that's crystal clear. So let's put that aside," he said.
Greenland belongs to Greenlanders and is not for sale, he reiterated.
"That's not only what (Greenland's) law on autonomy says, but also international law. You can't just sell something like that, that (kind of practice) is a thing of the past," Lokke Rasmussen said.
"In 1917 we sold the Danish West Indies (today the US Virgin Islands) without asking the people there what they wanted. We can't do that in a modern society, and we won't do it."
Trump Greenland threat
Since Trump was sworn in on January 20, he has repeatedly insisted that the United States will eventually end up taking over the Danish autonomous territory.
His Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday played down the threat of the United States using military force against Denmark, a NATO ally, but said of Trump's remarks on Greenland: "This is not a joke."
"President Trump's put out there what he intends to do, which is to purchase it," Rubio told SiriusXM Radio.
After a whirlwind tour of Berlin, Brussels and Paris on Tuesday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she had received strong support from her European counterparts to counter Trump's bid.
A poll published on Wednesday showed that a vast majority of Greenlanders do not want to become American.
"Eighty-five percent of residents in Greenland say: 'We don't want to be American'," a Danish member of parliament representing Greenland, Aaja Chemnitz, told AFP.
The territory has long pushed for independence, though that remains a distant possibility until it develops its economy further and can ease its dependence on Danish subsidies.
"We don't want to be Danes. We would like to have good relations with the Danes. But we want to find a different way that allows us to be Greenlanders," she said.
The Arctic island is believed to hold large untapped mineral and oil reserves.
It is located between the United States and Europe in a region of increasing strategic value, as the melting of Arctic sea ice opens up new shipping routes.