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LONDON — Iceland’s coalition government collapsed Monday, the first government to fall as a direct result of the global economic turmoil.
Prime Minister Geir Haarde said he and his Cabinet would resign immediately. Icelanders, once among the world’s wealthiest people, have taken to the streets in protest, banging pots and pans and throwing eggs and toilet paper at Haarde and other parliamentary leaders.
Haarde announced Friday that he would call early elections and said he would step down. He said doctors were treating him for cancer.
Ahead of those planned elections, Haarde’s Independence Party could not come to terms with the Social Democrats, its main partner in the 2-year-old coalition that was scheduled to stay in power until 2011.
