Roundup: Iceland's president urges informal talks to form new gov't

Icelandic President Gudni Johannesson on Friday urged all parties with representatives in parliament to conduct talks to form a new government following the failure of two successive party leaders to do so, Icelandic media reported.

Johannesson said he contacted the leaders of all parties with representation in parliament by phone Friday morning, and for now he has decided not to give the leader of any one party the mandate to form a government, according to online magazine Iceland Review.

Informal negotiations between parties are ongoing and all options are being evaluated, he said, adding he had asked party leaders to be aware of the responsibility they had to make every effort to form a government.

Johannesson stated he was not certain parliament would convene next week or the week thereafter, but that it would have to do so before Christmas.

Earlier on Friday, Left-Green Movement leader Katrin Jakobsdottir formally renounced the presidential mandate given to her to form a majority government to rule Iceland, online newspaper Iceland Monitor reported.

The Left-Green Movement's talks with four other opposition parties -- the Pirate Party, Vidreisn (Reform) party, Bright Future and the Social Democratic Alliance -- to form a grand alliance to oust the current governing parties fell though on Thursday.

Jakobsdottir told journalists that the situation was "tricky" and that the way forward was in the hands of the president.

Although the five opposition parties had shown a strong desire to negotiate and a good deal of progress had been made, differences of opinion on issues such as taxation and the allocation of funds for health and education were too great to overcome, according to Icelandic media.

On Nov. 16, Johannesson transferred the mandate to form the next government to the Left-Green Movement's leader after the Independence Party, which took a lead in the recent parliamentary election, had failed to do so after being handed the same mandate on Nov. 2.

Independence Party chairman Bjarni Benediktsson had attempted to reach an agreement with the Vidreisn party and Bright Future.

Those negotiations had broken down due to differences over fish management and European Union (EU) membership.

The Independence Party, one of the two current ruling parties, won 21 out of the 63 seats in the new parliament after 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 -percent electoral threshold with seven, four and three seats respectively. Endit