Iceland's president, who has delayed signing a highly controversial bill to repay more than $US5 billion lost by British and Dutch savers with Icelandic banks, says he will hold a news conference late on Tuesday.
After weeks of heated debate, Iceland's parliament narrowly passed an amended version of the Icesave bill last Wednesday, but nearly one quarter of the country's voters have signed a petition asking President Olafur Ragnar Grimmson to veto it.
Grimmson said then that he needed time before signing it into law.
The bill authorises Iceland to repay more than $US5 billion to Britain and The Netherlands, which reimbursed savers who lost money in Icelandic deposit accounts when the banks collapsed.
Many Icelandic citizens, reeling from the financial crisis, are angry about paying private debts involving banks under the regulatory watch of other countries.
Only once in Iceland's history has the president, whose post is largely symbolic, refused to sign a bill into law.
The constitution requires the issue to be put to a public vote if Grimsson rejects the bill.
The repayment issue has taken months to reach this stage, and included a row with Britain and the Netherlands over repayment terms which held up aid payments to Iceland from the International Monetary Fund.
Iceland has now begun to draw on funds from the IMF and other lenders, and a second review of the aid programme is due to take place in the middle of this month.
Continued aid is seen as crucial for the island's recovery, and the economy is not expected to return to growth until 2011.
The Icesave affair has also soured public sentiment towards joining the European Union. Iceland applied for membership last year.
