THE HAGUE, 21/02/03 - The Lower House as expected adopted a motion yesterday calling on the government to give a specific group of asylum-seekers a residence permit. The question is, whether the cabinet will honor the motion.

The Pim Fortuyn List (LPF) motion was supported by Labour (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP), the leftwing Greens (GroenLinks), the orthodox Christian ChristenUnie party and the center-left D66. Christian democrat (CDA) MP Algra was the only member of his party to vote for it "Because otherwise I could not have squared my conscience. " The rest of the CDA and the conservative (VVD) and orthodox Christian SGP parties voted against it.

The proposal adopted concerns about 2,300 asylum-seekers who have already been awaiting the final result of their first asylum application for five years. To qualify for a residence permit, they must not have a criminal record, speak adequate Dutch and come from a country where there have recently been human rights violations or a civil war.

The plan comes from Immigration Minister Hilbrand Nawijn and his LPF, but was earlier shot down by its coalition partners CDA and VVD. In order to avoid damaging the links with the government, Nawijn, who is also an MP, did not vote yesterday. In order not to damage relations with the Lower House, Premier Jan Peter Balkenende in turn made no use of his voting right as CDA MP.

Nawijn will introduce the motion in cabinet today. The caretaker government may not honor it, but the CDA governing party will then probably bring it up in coalition negotiations with the PvdA. Balkenende did not wish to "Anticipate the matter" yesterday after the vote.

At the same time, a parliamentary majority adopted a CDA motion. This actually supports the present asylum policy, and calls on the minister to use his authority in a humane way only for admitting very exceptional cases. Remarkably enough, the PvdA also supported this motion, possibly not to disturb the cabinet formation process with the CDA. The PvdA will propose a different asylum policy in the coalition negotiations, MP Klaas de Vries revealed.