Iceland Wants Us Planes to Stay

Iceland yesterday urged Nato to persuade the US to scrap controversial plans to withdraw air defences that have protected the alliance's smallest member for more than half a century.

Lord Robertson, Nato secretary-general, was meeting leaders in Reykjavik over a belated footnote to the end of the cold war - the removal of four US fighter planes.

Iceland is the only Nato member with no armed forces of its own, and it objects strongly to Washington's sudden decision to withdraw its last F-15 jets from what was a strategic base for monitoring the Soviet northern fleet.

Since the signing of a joint defence agreement with the US in 1951 the remote north Atlantic island has relied for protection on an American naval station at Keflavik on the south-west coast.

The US has 680 air force and 1,200 navy personnel on the base, which in addition to the F-15s is also home to four P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft.

Washington, now reorganising its forces, says the fighters are needed elsewhere. But Iceland still considers them essential to its defence: thus the appeal to Lord Robertson, passing through on his way to Washington.

He persuaded the US to put off plans to remove the planes, announced just before Iceland's general elections in May.

"It obviously wasn't the best news to get a week before the election," said David Oddsson, Europe's longest-serving prime minister and until now a staunch US ally.

Now Mr Oddsson wants the US navy to leave if its air force departs, arguing that no US personnel should stay without a clear commitment to Iceland's defence.

The threatened removal of the F-15s has reopened a long-standing debate about whether the tiny country needs its own defences. Ministers have suggested that Iceland, with a population of just 280,000, should form a 500-1,000 strong national guard.

But some analysts believe a US withdrawal could push the country to consider membership of the EU.