The prime minister of Greenland said Friday that the people of his mineral-rich Arctic territory do not want to be Americans, but he said he understood the U.S. interest in the island given its strategic location and he is open to greater cooperation with the United States.

A Danish foreign minister said Wednesday Denmark is “open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can cooperate, possibly even more closely than we already do, to ensure that American ambitions are fulfilled,

Faced with what many in Denmark are calling Trump's "provocation," Frederiksen has broadly attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, repeatedly referring to the US as "Denmark's closest partner". It was "only natural" that the US was preoccupied by the Arctic and Greenland, she added.