“If we had to choose between the United States and Denmark right now, we would choose Denmark,” Greenland’s prime minister said.
Published January 13, 2026
Greenland Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen says the autonomous Danish territory wants to remain part of Denmark rather than be incorporated into the United States, as US President Donald Trump continues to push for the takeover of the island.
Speaking at a press conference in Copenhagen with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Nielsen said he wanted the Arctic region to remain part of Denmark.
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“We are currently facing a geopolitical crisis. If we had to choose between the United States and Denmark right now, we would choose Denmark,” he said.
Frederiksen said it had not been easy to counter what she denounced as “totally unacceptable pressure from our closest allies.”
Nielsen’s comments came a day after Greenland’s government rejected Trump’s takeover threat.
“The United States has reiterated its desire to take over Greenland, something that Greenland’s governing coalition cannot tolerate under any circumstances,” the island’s coalition government said.
“As part of the Danish Federation, Greenland is a NATO member state and therefore Greenland’s defense must be carried out through NATO,” it added.
President Trump has claimed to occupy Greenland and threatened that the region will come under U.S. control “in some way.”
The threats pose a crisis for NATO and have angered European allies, who have warned that occupying Greenland would have a serious impact on relations between the United States and Europe.
On Wednesday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland at the White House.
Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt told reporters in Copenhagen on Tuesday that they had requested a meeting with Rubio following threats from President Trump.
“The reason we asked for this meeting was to move this entire discussion into a conference room and look each other in the eye and talk about these things,” Rasmussen said.
Arja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic politician in the Danish parliament, told Al Jazeera that the majority of Greenland’s 56,000 citizens do not want to become US citizens.
“Greenland is not and never will be for sale,” said Chemnitz, of the Inuit Attakatigiit Party.
“People seem to think they can buy the soul of Greenland. It’s our identity, it’s our language, it’s our culture. And if you become an American citizen, it’s going to look completely different. That’s not what the Greenlandic majority wants.”
