A bill passed into law yesterday sets 1 January 2011 as the day when the Icelandic Defense Agency will cease to exist.
Created in the wake of the NATO base’s departure in 2006, the idea at the time was to develop some sort of quasi-military defense mechanism, mostly involving radar and dozens of bureaucrats. With the bill’s passage, the functions of the office will instead be incorporated into existing government offices.
Be that as it may, it still doesn’t explain the following:
If you visit the website of ECA Program – a private Dutch military consultancy firm – and look at the website’s HTML (which most can do simply by pressing Ctrl and then U), the metadata leads off with “Icelandic Defense Agency”. As ECA Program only recently approached Iceland with the idea of paying to build a base here where they could train jet pilots, it could be that they intended to work with the Icelandic Defense Agency. However, the proposal to shut down the agency was made last year.
So which came first, the ECA or the cutting of the Icelandic Defense Agency? If the latter, then what role will ECA Program actually have in Iceland?