Word: icelanders
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...Iceland may cave in to the international pressure. The latest opinion polls suggest a softening of hostility toward the repayment scheme, with 53% of Icelanders against it, down from about 70% last month. This could reflect recent appeals by Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, who is at loggerheads with the President and says the deal is essential for Iceland's recovery. But if Icelanders fall back on the Viking tradition of bold defiance and vote against the plan, this could be one long saga indeed...
...many Icelanders say they are being unfairly persecuted. They are still smarting from Britain's decision to use antiterrorism laws in 2008 to freeze Iceland's assets and force the country to agree to reimburse the British savers. "The British government used gunboat diplomacy, putting us in the same category as al-Qaeda and the Taliban," says Magnus Arni Skulason, a founding member of InDefence, a grass-roots campaign that helped secure 62,000 names - over a quarter of Iceland's 320,000 people - on a petition calling for the referendum. Skulason says Iceland has become the whipping...
...rules on sovereign debt and banking are slightly fuzzy," he says. "The best way to resolve this would have been with arbitration through an impartial court, but the U.K. and the Netherlands refused." The country of Latvia, which suffered its own monumental economic collapse last year, says that Iceland is being ganged up on because of its size and relative unimportance. "Is this reaction due to the fact that Iceland is a small country?" Latvian Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins asked on Jan. 7. "It is difficult to imagine that similar comments would be heard if, for example, such a step...
...Other analysts say that Iceland's future may not be as imperiled as the British and Dutch suggest. "When you have a debtor who cannot repay immediately, what do you do? Do you beat Iceland to pieces? If you do, the chances of getting the money back goes down the drain," says Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels and a board member of the Central Bank of Iceland. "The U.K. and Netherlands may feel that it would be easier to be repaid if Iceland is in the E.U." (Read "Iceland's Urgent...
...Read "Iceland's Fashion Designers Flourish in the Downturn...