Dutch Prime Minister Mr Wim Kok said today the May 15th general election would go ahead despite the killing of anti-immigration politician Mr Pim Fortuyn yesterday.
Politicians were considering postponing the election following the killing.
Fortuyn, an openly gay politician who was riding high in the polls after campaigning on a populist platform, was shot dead yesterday by a gunman after giving a radio interview.
Meanwhile, the suspect held after the killing of Mr Fortuyn is a militant animal rights activist who had problems with one of the dead politician's associates, a spokesman for his party said today.
Mr Jim Janssen van Raaij, the number three of the "Pim Fortuyn List" party, said that the detained suspect, a 32-year-old environmentalist, had had trouble with a party member and pig farmer, Mr Wien van den Brink.
He identified the suspect as Mr Volkert van der Graaf.
"It was really emotional," he said. "My colleague Wien ven den Brink knew the assassin and he's broken up by all this."
A spokesman for the Ecology Offensive group, based in the eastern city of Wageningen, said earlier that the suspect being held by police belonged to an environmental organisation.
The suspect - who was identified by police only as a 32-year-old white Dutch male - was active in the struggle against bio-industry, animal testing, and for animal rights, the spokesman said.
Mr Fortuyn planned to lift a ban that went into effect in January that outlawed the farming of animals for fur if his party came to power, ANP reported.
Justice ministry official Mr M.G. Hofstee told ANP that bullets of the same calibre as cartridges retrieved at the scene of the crime had been found in a search of the suspect's apartment.
- AFP