Foreign relations of Iceland Foreign relations of Iceland Iceland's closest relations are with Norway and other Nordic states, Canada and the United States. Iceland hosted the historic 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavík, which set the stage for the end of the Cold War. Iceland's principal historical international disputes involved disagreements over fishing rights. Conflict with the United Kingdom led to the so-called Cod Wars in 1952–56 because of the extension of the fishing zone from 3 to 4 nautical miles (6 to 7 km), 1958–61 because of extending the fishing zone to 12 nautical miles (22 km) in 1972–73 because of its further extension
Cod Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) banned fishing for northern (that is, cod to the north and east of the island of Newfoundland, in Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization areas JKL) cod in 1992, which caused great economic hardship in Newfoundland and Labrador. The collapse was blamed on cold water, or seals, and it had even been suggested the cod were really still there; only rarely was overfishing acknowledged, or management's role in that. The DFO partly lifted its ban in 1997, although the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea noted the poor recovery of Canadian cod stocks. In