Stockholm (AFP)
The Greenlandic authorities said on Friday that their island was not for sale after revelations in the US press that Donald Trump has set his sights on the vast Danish autonomous territory.
The day before, The Wall Street Journal reported that the former New York businessman, who was once a renowned real estate tycoon before embarking on politics and becoming president of the United States, would have inquired several times with his advisers in the White House the possibility for the United States to buy this territory of 56,000 inhabitants.
"Greenland is rich in precious resources (...) We are open for business, not for sale," the Greenland Foreign Ministry replied on Twitter on Friday.
Joined by AFP, the cabinet of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen did not wish to comment immediately.
"It must be an April fool", tweeted the former head of the Danish government Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Liberal Party).
Greenland is a gigantic Arctic island, as big as France four times, rich in natural resources (oil, gas, gold, diamond, uranium, zinc, lead) and where the effects of global warming are evident.
The melting ice, which causes the rise of the sea level, has multiplied by four between 2003 and 2013.
Since his election in 2016, the climate-skeptical president has notably removed the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and has systematically sought to unravel the environmental regulations adopted during the eight years of the presidency of the Democrat Barack Obama. predecessor.
Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953, when it entered the Danish "Kingdom Community". In 1979, the island obtained the status of "autonomous territory", but its economy still depends heavily on the subsidies paid by Copenhagen.
© 2019 AFP