Right sweeps to victory in Denmark

Sweeping victory: Anders Fogh Rasmussen

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Denmark's next prime minister has pledged to tighten immigration laws after the centre-right won a stunning election victory.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, leader of the Liberal Party, said that he also aimed to cap taxes and improve welfare provision when he formally takes power after beating veteran Social Democrat Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in Tuesday's vote.

In a bitter election battle, Fogh Rasmussen, 48, had campaigned under the slogan "Time For Change" and his victory is seen as a marked shift to the right.

With 98.9 percent of the vote counted, the Liberal Party and its allies, including the anti-immigration Danish People's Party, had 98 seats in the 179-seat parliament, well above the 90 needed for a majority.

The ruling and once deemed electorally invincible Social Democrats and their parliamentary supporters won just 77 seats. In the last election in 1998, Nyrup Rasmussen had an 88-87 majority.

Fogh Rasmussen's Liberals won 31.2 percent of the vote, up from 24.0 in 1998 and replacing the Social Democrats as Denmark's biggest party for the first time in 80 years. The Social Democrats won 29.3 percent, down from 35.9.

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Nyrup Rasmussen, in office since 1993 and the EU's longest serving PM, was due to hand his resignation to Queen Margrethe at 0900 GMT on Wednesday. He made a tearful concession of defeat on Tuesday night.

After meeting other party leaders, the queen seemed certain to ask Fogh Rasmussen, a former tax and economy minister, to try to form a new government. The two Rasmussens are not related.

Fogh Rasmussen told a TV interviewer of his plans for the first 100 days of office: "We want to reform hospitals, ensure better care of the elderly, increase maternity leave to one year... tighten policy regarding foreigners and, from day one, put a lid on taxes."

His calls for stricter limits on asylum seekers and refugees, seen as "spongers" by right-wingers, became the biggest campaign issue in a nation where the main parties showed little difference on economic policy. Both pledged to keep unemployment at its 25-year low.

Nyrup Rasmussen's gamble on a snap election backfired

The defeat was a major rebuff to Nyrup Rasmussen, 58, who called the snap election in a gamble that voters would unite behind his nine-year leadership after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Denmark is the second Scandinavian nation after Norway to oust ditch a Social Democratic government this year in favour of the centre-right. Norway's Labour Party, blamed for failing to update a cradle-to-grave welfare state, lost a September election.

In Sweden, Social Democratic Prime Minister Goran Persson faces an election in September 2002. His party won just 36.6 percent of the vote at the last elections in 1998, the party's worst result since 1920.

The new prime minister will have to form a government with the Conservatives and centrist parties but will depend on informal backing from the far-right Danish People's Party which is strongly anti-immigrant.

Turnout on Tuesday was 89.3 percent, a near record.