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Belgian socialist party

cool on special powers

BRUSSELS: The Belgian socialist party SP, one of the four partners in the centre-left coalition of Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, does not like the government's idea of asking parliament for special powers to draft the 1997 budget.

"We would not invent something like that. That is not our style," a government official belonging to the Flemish Socialistische Partij told Reuters on Friday.

A source close to the SP told Reuters that Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Johan Vande Lanotte discussed the government's wish to draft the 1997 budget with special powers with a small group of parliamentarians of his socialist party.

"The minister did not use the word 'special powers' at that meeting...but there is a need to act quickly (on the budget)," a spokesman for Vande Lanotte told Reuters.

"The idea of drafting the 1997 budget in June does indeed live within the government," he added.

One source said that the idea of special powers was advocated mainly by the CVP, the Flemish christian-democratic party in the coalition.

Earlier on Friday a government source told Reuters that the government wants to use special powers to draft the 1997 budget. "If we want to be sure the budget deficit is cut to three percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1996, measures for the 1997 budget will need to take effect in the second half of this year," he said.

The special powers technique, last used in the early eighties, allows the government to push through measures without parliamentary approval.-Reuter