Iceland is prepared to make "sacrifices," Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said Friday as parliament continued to debate compensation terms for mainly British and Dutch savers in a failed Icelandic bank, according to dpa. Sigurdardottir said Icelanders were "angry" over "the burden of compensation for the Icesave savings accounts of Landsbanki," one of the country's three main banks that were nationalized in October, she said in an op-ed article in the Financial Times newspaper. The debt would equal "about 50 per cent of our gross domestic product," Sigurdardotir said, referring to the some 5.5 billion dollars Britain and the Netherlands wants Iceland to repay. That sum is considerable for a country of only 320,000 people. The premier noted that Iceland is "battling the effects of severe banking and currency crises and a recession that is affecting our part of the world as much as any other." A sign of the anger was visible Thursday evening when a protest was staged outside parliament in Reykjavik. In parliament the opposition as well as some members of the ruling red-green coalition that took over earlier this year have also criticized the terms of the compensation plan. "Parliament is looking into ways to attach conditions to the state guarantee to ensure the economic survival and sovereignty of Iceland. Here we need to stress the mutual interest of all three nations in Iceland's capacity to fulfil its debt obligation," the premier said. Fulfilling the Icesave compensation plan is seen as necessary for Iceland to move ahead with its efforts to join the European Union. Last month it handed in its application to join the 27-nation bloc. Iceland's three biggest banks, which were nationalized in the autumn of 2008, have left the country saddled with debts amounting to 10 times its gross domestic product. The banking crisis triggered an economic crisis which has seen unemployment soar from 1 per cent to nearly 10 per cent, interest rates reach double figures and the national currency, the krona, plummet in value against other currencies.
