Monarch, PM meet over future of Dutch govt

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende met Queen Beatrix on Monday to chart the way forward after his government collapsed.

THE HAGUE, February 22, 2010 (AFP) - Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende met Queen Beatrix on Monday to chart the way forward after his government collapsed over the Netherlands's role in Afghanistan.

Balkenende held 90 minutes of talks with the head of state at her working palace in The Hague early Monday, government spokeswoman Fridy van Hapert said.

Thereafter, the queen was to meet the leaders of the two Dutch houses of parliament, political party chiefs and the deputy president of the council of state advisory body.

"The queen is obtaining advice before she can determine what the next step will be," government spokesman Henk Brons explained.

Balkenende tendered the resignations of the 12 Labour Party (PvdA) cabinet members to Queen Beatrix on Saturday, after the centre-left coalition fell apart over whether to extend the Dutch troop deployment in Afghanistan.

Following the latest in a string of public coalition spats, the Labour Party withdrew from the government insisting that the military mission must end this year as planned.

NATO had asked the Netherlands to extend its four-year-old mission, mainly in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, by a year to August 2011.

After the PvdA's withdrawal, Balkenende also offered to relinquish the 12 cabinet posts held by his own Christian Democratic (CDA) party, the majority coalition member, and the three of the smaller Christian Union (CU).

The queen must now decide whether or not to accept the resignations and call early elections.

In talks scheduled to last into Monday night and resume Tuesday morning, Queen Beatrix will meet PvdA leader Wouter Bos, who was the vice premier and finance minister in Balkenende's cabinet, as well as CU leader Andre Rouvoet -- fellow vice premier and minister of youth and family affairs.

The queen will also meet the parliamentary leaders of all 11 political parties represented in the lower house.

Van Hapert could not say when the queen would make her decision on the way forward. "We just have to wait," she said.

Added political analyst Andre Krouwel: "She (the queen) will take her time. She is not somebody who rushes things."

If the queen accepts the resignations, as widely excepted, parliamentary elections will have to be brought forward. They had been scheduled for March next year.

"Elections are likely to be held before the summer, by June at the latest," home affairs ministry spokesman Vincent van Steen has told AFP.

He said the CDA and CU cabinet ministers would be expected to take over the portfolios left vacant by the PvdA until a new government is formed.

In the Dutch system of proportional representation, it is nearly impossible for one party to win an absolute majority in the 150-seat parliament, and it can sometimes take months to cobble together a viable coalition government.

Van Steen said the queen could theoretically appoint an official to try to reconcile the parties.

She could also ask the CDA and CU to try to form a new coalition without fresh elections, but this would leave the two parties without a parliamentary majority and effectively powerless in the meantime.

Both of these options were "highly unlikely" according to the spokesman, who said neither had been exercised in the past.

The CDA currently holds 41 parliamentary seats and the PvdA 33. The CU has six.