Majority Of Icelanders Want Talks On Joining EU - Poll
The survey of 650 people, conducted by the Capcent polling institute and published by the Morgunbladid daily, indicated that 65.5% of Icelanders want negotiations on EU membership, while 19.7% opposed such talks.
In a similar poll conducted last month, 64.3% supported EU membership negotiations while 23.9% were against the idea.
"The (Icelandic) people believe now as before that we should start negotiations with the EU," head of the pro-EU Federation of Icelandic Industries, Jon Steindor Valdimarsson, told the newspaper.
"We don't need a referendum on that issue," he added, referring to a suggestion by Prime Minister Geir Haarde this week to rapidly hold a plebiscite on whether membership talks should be launched.
That move was widely seen as a way to ease the battle between the contrasting opinions within his traditionally anti-EU Independence Party, which is set to make clear its stance towards the bloc at its national congress this month.
Icelandic Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir has threatened that her pro-EU Social Democratic Party will exit the two-party coalition if Haarde's party does not agree to seek union membership by the end of January, something that would prompt snap elections.
Gisladottir told Morgunbladid Saturday that any referendum on the EU should be accompanied by general elections, and that both could be organized in the country of some 320,000 people as early as April or May this year.
Haarde, who has come under intense pressure since Iceland's once-booming financial sector collapsed in October under the weight of the global financial crisis and the government rushed in to take over major banks, has been vehemently opposed to staging elections before his term ends in 2011.
Once the icy island's largest political grouping with 37% of the vote in general elections in 2007, the Independence Party has slipped to third place with an approval rating of just 25% in a Gallup poll published Friday.
In that poll, the Social Democrats saw their support swell to 28% from the 26.8% of the vote they garnered in the 2007 elections.
The biggest winner in the crisis, meanwhile, has been the Left Green Party, which for years has argued that Iceland's powerful banking sector had too much influence and represented a culture of greed that could harm the country.
The party saw its support leap to 29% in Friday's poll, more than double the 13.5% of votes it received two years ago.
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Publié le 03 janvier 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones
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