// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
Close race as Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU
Latest opinion polls have been so close that the result is impossible to call
Icelanders are voting in a referendum to decide whether to resume talks on joining the European Union, 13 years after they were broken off.
In an indication of how tight the result is expected to be, the latest opinion poll put the No campaign in the lead with 51.6%. An earlier poll had put the Yes campaign ahead.
Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir's centre-left government had already intended to hold a referendum, but turbulent international affairs prompted her to bring it forward.
But the debate was fought less over Nato member Iceland's security concerns than over its vital fishing industry and sovereignty.
Voting is due to go on from 09:00 to 22:00 GMT on Saturday and the result is expected in the early hours of Sunday.
Iceland has a population of under 400,000. More than one in five voters had already cast their ballots in early voting before Saturday, according to Iceland's public broadcaster RUV.
The question on the ballot is, external: "Should Iceland resume accession negotiations with the European Union?"
Although Iceland is already part of the EU's single market and Schengen border-free zone as part of the European Economic Area, EU membership would bring it into the customs union and eventually the euro.
Iceland's application to join the EU was already well advanced when it put talks on hold in 2013, and European Commission officials have indicated that talks could be finalised in one or two years. Of the 35 so-called chapters of talks ranging from fisheries and economic policy to freedom of speech and free movement of goods, 27 had begun and 11 of them were provisionally complete, external.