Greenland party leaders issued a joint statement Friday asserting that the autonomous territory rejects the US calls for acquisition. Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four other party leaders stated: “We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders.”

The world’s largest island, an autonomous territory under the Kingdom of Denmark, has been at the center of international controversy since President Donald Trump announced his ambition to acquire Greenland for the United States, citing a supposed design on the territory by Russia and China.

President Trump commented Friday that the US is “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” Trump’s interest in Greenland goes back to his first term, when the president called acquiring the territory “essentially a large real estate deal.”

According to the Atlantic Council, the Arctic—where Greenland is located—is now the scene of a large contest, in which Russia and China are increasing their footprint in the region. Greenland is an important asset, with its defense mechanisms, such as early warning systems and missile tracking radar feeding directly into US homeland defense.

In a poll carried out by Verian for the Danish news outlet Berlingske and the Greenlandic media house Sermitsiaq, 85 percent of Greenlanders do not want to be a part of the US, while 6 percent replied that they do. The remaining 9 percent were undecided. Another poll by YouGov shows that 16 percent of interviewed Americans consider Greenland a “very important issue” to US national security, 22 percent answered “somewhat important” and 12 percent said “not very important.” The remainder opted for “not at all important” or “not sure.”

Reacting to the dispute, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that the US is exempting itself from the international rules it had long promoted until just recently. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stated that the “fate of Greenland will be decided by Greenlanders and the Kingdom of Denmark,” adding that the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and inviolability of borders are UN principles which must be upheld.