Broad support for NATO membership

Membership of NATO enjoys broad support in Icelandic politics and recent events on the international level reinforce the arguments to continue being members of the defense alliance says Birgir Ármannsson, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Iceland's parliament.

Ögmundur Jónasson, MP for the Left Greens, said yesterday to this website he intends to put forward a resolution in the parliament calling for a referendum on Iceland's membership of NATO claiming the people should be given a vote on the matter.

„This debate naturally surfaces every now and then and the policy of the Left Green Movement is well known although they haven't made any attempt to carry it out when they have been in government,“ says Ármannsson who is an MP for the governing Independence Party.

„There is a broad solidarity in Icelandic politics - excluding the Left Greens - that the membership of NATO is one of the cornerstones of our foreign policy and in my opinion recent events on the international level reinforce the arguments for that policy.“

In spite of having no standing army Iceland has been a member of NATO since 1949.