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Iceland vote: president challenges British PM
AFP - Monday, March 8
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Members of the Icelandic 'InDefence movement' talk with the press following the partial results of a referendum in which Icelanders overwhelmingly rejected plans to repay British and Dutch investors in failed bank Icesave.
REYKJAVIK (AFP) - – Iceland's president bounced the ball back into Gordon Brown's court after voters overwhelmingly rejected a plan to pay Britain and the Netherlands billions for losses in the Icesave bank collapse.
President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, whose refusal to sign the compensation bill voted through parliament in December led directly to the referendum, challenged Britain's prime minister to settle the matter.
"Gordon Brown should now step forward and ensure the next steps to guarantee a solution that everyone can accept," he told state broadcasters RUV Sunday.
"The big question now is what Gordon Brown will do."
Final results Sunday of the weekend referendum on the deal showed that 93.2 percent of voters had rejected it.
That sent Iceland's leftwing government back into talks with London and The Hague to find a solution more acceptable to the country's voters.
Britain's Treasury and the Dutch finance ministry have both described the referendum results as an internal matter for Iceland. Both countries have already said they are ready for further talks on the matter.
And British finance minister Alistair Darling told the BBC on Sunday: "The fundamental point for us is that we get our money back -- but on the terms and conditions and so on, we're prepared to be flexible."
About 230,000 Icelanders were called to polling stations Saturday to say whether the country should honour a deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands 3.9 billion euros (5.3 billion dollars), at 5.5-percent interest, by 2024. Related article: Events leading to Iceland bank payout referendum
This would be to compensate the two countries for money they paid to 340,000 of their citizens hit by the collapse of Icesave in 2008.
Grimsson congratulated Iceland's voters Sunday for sending a clear message.
He had already argued that Icelanders were willing to agreement a settlement.
"But they are not ready to pay a very high interest rate so that the British and Dutch governments would make a huge profit off this whole exercise."
Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, who had argued that with a new deal around the corner the vote was meaningless, told RUV broadcaster the result had come as no surprise.
"After this referendum it is our job to start finishing the negotiations," she added.
Reykjavik has for weeks been attempting to hammer out a new agreement with Britain and the Netherlands.
Under pressure from the opposition, the government even turned down a more favourable offer than the one voted down on Saturday.
Some observers had warned that a "no" vote might delay the payment of the remaining half of an International Monetary Fund rescue package worth 2.1-billion dollars. Related article: Icelanders express frustration and fury as they vote
There were also fears it could hit European Union and euro currency membership talks, as well as Iceland's credit rating.
But a European Commission spokesman said of the result: "This is a subject which it is for the Icelanders to have their say on."
Iceland's bid for European Union membership was an entirely separate matter, he added.
"The Commission has already given its green light (for the opening of membership talks): now it's in the hands of the member states," he added.
Iceland's Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson stressed the importance of quickly securing a new deal, preferably before British and Dutch elections due in May and June.
"If we were not successful in solving this before (those elections), it might take some time to form new governments so that could mean further delays," he told reporters Sunday.
More delays in the drawn-out Icesave debacle could prove fatal to Iceland's leftwing government, which negotiated the agreement considered by many here as little more than a foreign diktat.
"The government stands weak after this result," said Eirikur Bergmann Einarsson, a political science professor at the Bifrost University.
The referendum result sent a clear message that: "Iceland will not be bullied into an unjust agreement."
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