BY CARL-ERIK ISACCSSON
STOCKHOLM - Rifts are showing in the opposition Conservative Party here over its immigration policy. The chairman in the party's youth organization, Thomas Idegaard, and Per Unckel, a prominent party spokesman, have drafted a new party program calling for greater restrictions on the right to asylum but more open borders for the immigrants to work in Sweden. They propose these workers be denied the right to social security that Swedish citizens have.

Sten Andersson, a Conservative member of parliament in the southern town Malmo, is advocating tighter immigration restrictions. In the 1970s, Andersson was a member of the Social Democratic party and a trade union official at the Kockums shipyard. He projects the image of speaking for the Swedish worker and still works one day a week at the shipyard. Recently, he addressed a meeting organized by a newly formed network called "The People's Will and Mass Immigration." Members of ultrarightist groups like Keep Sweden Swedish and the Sweden Democrats also participated in that gathering.

Andersson was hailed by Karl-Johan Lidefeldt, one of the leaders of the new organization, for having the courage to have his own opinion on immigration. Lidefeldt told the Conservative party's main paper, Svenska Dagbladet, that the goal of the People's Will is to allow immigrants only temporary work permits and to return immigrants to their home countries.

Idegard immediately demanded that Andersson be expelled from the Conservative Party, but party secretary Gunnar Hokmark argued, "You can't expel a person for having participated in a meeting."

The ruling Social Democrats are also promoting a policy of deportations, offering 10,000 kronor ($1,297) to immigrants from Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, and Albania if they return to their native land. The Swedish government has also complained that Bonn is not taking back refugees who are crossing the borders to Sweden to escape repatriation to Yugoslavia by Bonn.

The dispute between the Conservative youth organization and the party leadership reflects something deeper. The policy that Idegaard and Unckel have proposed has little hearing in the party. The party's spokesman on questions of immigration, Gustav von Essen, is skeptical of the new proposal. Over the years he has advocated and practiced a policy in line with other governments in the European Union, often in basic agreement with the social democrats. On the other hand, Andersson's views on immigration are heard frequently within the conservative party.

The Conservative party, although it is ahead in recent polls, is also in a crisis over the European Monetary Union. Party chief Carl Bildt is a strong advocate of Sweden joining the EMU from the start. But Mats Svegfors, the editor of Svenska Dagbladet, is expressing his doubts over the EMU project almost daily.

Carl-Erik Isacsson is a member of the metal workers union in Sodertalje, Sweden.  
 
 
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