NUUK (AFP) - Greenland, which gained broader powers with its new self-rule status on June 21, dreams of full independence from Denmark one day, but observers question whether an Arctic nation of just 57,000 people is really viable.

"Independence will come, I'm convinced of that, but it's not on my government's agenda for the next four years," Greenland's Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist, head of the leftist pro-independence Inuit Ataqatigiit party, said.

A pragmatist, he acknowledged that "it will take time"--unlike his predecessor Hans Enoksen who had lobbied hard for independence in 2021, exactly three centuries after Denmark colonised the island of 2.2 million square kilometres (849,424 square miles).

For Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, "Greenland's future is in the hands of Greenlanders. Independence depends on them."

But in the Danish territory, which relies heavily on subsidies from Copenhagen that account for more half of its budget, aspirations of independence run up against "harsh realities," Marianne Krogh Andersen, the Danish author of the book "Greenland, Powerful and Powerless", told AFP.

"It's impossible right now for Greenland to make it on its own without (financial) aid from the Danish capital," she said.

It would be "extremely difficult" for the small population--whose only resource at present is fishing--to maintain its standard of living and its costly welfare system if Denmark were to put an end to its subsidies, she said.

In the Danish government's entourage in Copenhagen, there are doubts about whether the island could survive on its own, even if its economy were to receive a major boost from the potential oil and mineral riches believed to be buried under its icecap.

Some observers, including Nuuk University lecturer Pia Vedel Ankersen, claim Greenland's population is too small to meet the challenges posed by independence and its necessary economic growth.

"Greenland could be independent tomorrow if it could do without the 4.0 billion kroner it receives from Denmark (537 million euros, US$756 million in annual subsidies plus costs for defense, police and judiciary covered by Copenhagen), which represented about a third" of Greenland's gross domestic product of some 12 billion kroner in 2008.

"To deprive themselves of that today would mean society would collapse, and even the most vehement advocates of independence would not accept a throwback to the misery of the past," she said.

Only an independent economy based on oil and mineral revenues could realise "this dream of independence without too many sacrifices," she said.

But even at that, independence could only be a reality "in 50 years", unless Greenland chose "other more rapid routes, such as joining the European Union which it withdrew from in 1985 to protect its fishermen or by forming an alliance with the United States," Ankersen said.

"A choice like that could speed up the process and the EU option is the most appropriate, since Greenland could benefit from the EU's structural funds," she said.

However, she noted, a "completely independent Greenland is an illusion".

Even Denmark with its 5.5 million inhabitants is "dependent on the European Union and its cooperation with other countries," she said.

That view is echoed by Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist.

Greenland's new self-rule status "does not mean isolating ourselves and living alone in a corner of the Arctic, but rather opening ourselves to the outside world and being an actor on the international stage," he said.

As proof, Kleist said Sunday Greenland would soon resume negotiations with the United States to expand a 2004 cooperation agreement on modernising the US Thule radar base on the territory, which is a key part of US plans for a future anti-missile shield. (By SLIM ALLAGUI/AFP)