Nearly 70% of Icelanders polled believe the Icelandic government should apologize to the Iraqi people for their part in supporting the 2003 invasion.
The survey, conducted by MMR, asked, “Do you believe the Icelandic government should publicly apologize for having supported military action in Iraq?”. Of the 865 people who responded, 69.7% said yes and 30.3% said no.
The discussion of whether or not to publicly apologize to the Iraqi people has most recently come up in parliament, with Foreign Affairs Committee chairperson Árni Þór Sigurðsson saying that the idea is certainly possible.
There has also been talk of investigations into how Iceland ended up in the so-called “coalition of the willing” in the first place. In early 2003, about 80% of Icelanders polled by Gallup were against supporting any military action against Iraq, and the matter was never voted upon within parliament. Somehow, Iceland ended up on the list of supporting nations anyway. Many believe that this was the work of Davíð Oddsson and Halldór Ásgrímsson, who were prime minister and foreign minister, respectively, at that time.