Entire Dutch Cabinet Resigns

The entire Cabinet of Prime Minister Wim Kok resigned Wednesday after a bitter fight over whether to give Dutch citizens the right to vote in referendums split the ruling coalition.

Kok informed Queen Beatrix of the resignations, but it was not immediately known if he would form a new Cabinet or call for new parliamentary elections.

Â"In view of the situation, the ministers... decided to jointly resign,Â" Kok said in a letter to the queen.

The government collapse began before dawn, when a lone lawmaker in Parliament's upper chamber blocked a bill to let the Dutch public vote in referendums, a longtime goal of the Democrats 66 party, the junior member of the three-party ruling coalition.

The bill would have permitted citizens to decide certain economic and social issues through a referendum, such as whether to join the European Union's common currency. Issues of taxation and the military would be exempt from public votes.

Democrats 66 resigned its Cabinet posts in protest after the bill failed. The Cabinet met during the day in an effort to thwart a collapse, but the talks were fruitless, and ministers of the right leaning Liberal Party and Kok's left-of-center Labor Party also quit.

The Liberal and Labor parties have a large-enough majority to continue ruling as a two-party government. But the centrist Democrats 66 has often soothed tense relations between its two larger partners in parliament.

After debating all night and into the early morning, lawmakers in Parliament's 75-member upper chamber vetoed the bill. Forty-nine lawmakers voted for the bill, but it needed 50 votes -- a two-thirds majority -- for passage.

The Liberal, Labor and Democrats 66 parties had agreed, when the current government was formed following last May's national elections, to take up the issue of referendum voting rights.

But Wednesday, Hans Wiegel, a senior member of the Liberal Party, voted against the measure. He argued the measure was flawed because it would give the public too much power over government policy, particularly in issues involving European and international affairs.

All other Liberal Party members of the upper chamber voted in favor of the bill, despite earlier warnings that they would block it. Such a drama was unusual in the largely figurehead upper chamber, where a vote hasn't caused a government to fall since 1907.

The crisis comes at an awkward time for the Netherlands, which is a member of NATO and has committed forces to the alliance's air campaign against Yugoslavia.