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Iceland's five opposition parties agree to formal coalition talks

Xinhua, November 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Iceland's five opposition parties have agreed to begin formal coalition talks aimed to form a new majority government, Icelandic media reported on Sunday.

Under the leadership of the Left-Green Movement, a broad group of five parties, including all of Iceland's political parties with MPs after the recent elections except the two current governing parties, will now be working on forming a new government, according to the online newspaper Iceland Monitor.

The other four parties that are to engage in formal coalition talks are the Pirate Party, the Vidreisn (Revival) party, the Bright Future and the Social Democratic Alliance.

"We shall be setting up policy groups that will be working over the next few days to ascertain whether there is a basis for a government coalition," Left-Green Movement leader Katrin Jakobsdottir was quoted as saying.

Iceland's President Gudni Johannesson on Wednesday transferred the mandate to form the next government to the Left-Green Movement's leader after the Independence Party chief failed to do so.

Bjarni Benediktsson, chairman of the Independence Party, which took a lead in the recent parliamentary election, said Tuesday his attempt to reach an agreement with the Vidreisn party and Bright Future had failed.

Formal negotiations between the three Icelandic parties on forming a new government had broken down due to differences over fish management and European Union (EU) membership, according to Icelandic media.

The Independence Party, one of the two current ruling parties, got 21 out of the 63 seats in the parliament with winning 29.0 percent of the ballots cast in the Oct. 29 election.

However, the centrist Progressive Party, the other ruling party, finished fourth with only eight seats, 11 fewer than what it had gained in the last parliamentary election in 2013.

The Left-Green Movement gained 10 seats with 15.9 percent of votes, while the Pirate Party, which had taken the lead in many pre-election polls over the months, also won 10 seats with 14.5 percent.

The Vidreisn party, the Bright Future and the Social Democratic Alliance also crossed the 5-percent electoral threshold with seven, four and three seats respectively. Endit