Central bank governors should quit: Iceland PM

Iceland's prime minister said she hopes to oust the country's central bank leaders before International Monetary Fund advisers arrive later this week.

Johanna Sigurdardottir said she wants new central bank governors to be in place to discuss Iceland's economic collapse with the team of visiting IMF advisers.

Iceland's economy, one of the most vulnerable victims of the global crisis, imploded late last year under a mountain of debt.

Opposition legislators, including members of the former governing Independence Party, have stalled a parliamentary bill which would authorize Sigurdardottir to remove the governors.

They have demanded time to amend the legislation following publication on today of a European Union review of laws on financial institutions.

"It is preferable that it's not the outgoing board of governors that speaks with the IMF experts, but the new governors," Sigurdardottir told reporters at her weekly news conference.

She said the EU report was irrelevant to her plan and claimed that opposition parties were using it as a tactic to delay the governors' ouster.

First Published: Feb 25, 2009 09:42 IST