Whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has published a document revealing confidential information about the role of the Netherlands in Afghanistan prior to the fall of the Dutch coalition government.
More on WikiLeaks
Read more on the whistleblower site WikiLeaks and its controversial director Julian Assange.
Some of the leaked cables contain classified Dutch diplomatic messages. And some of the recent cyber attacks on MasterCard, PayPal and other major internet sites have apparently been launched from the Netherlands.
In the document, Mr Verhagen alluded to comments made by Jan Peter Balkenende – the Dutch Prime Minister at the time – to President Barack Obama. Mr Balkenende apparently told Mr Obama that, while there was disagreement in the cabinet on the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan, he was convinced that the Netherlands would continue to have a presence there to carry on the ‘3-D’ approach – defence, diplomacy and development.
Fall Balkenende cabinet
In September 2009, dissent between the coalition partners of Mr Balkenende’s Christian Democrats (CDA), the Labour Party and the smaller, orthodox Christian party ChristenUnie (CU) began to show when Mr Verhagen hinted at a possible extension of troop deployment. A majority of MPs had voted to support the mission in 2007 on condition that troops should be withdrawn by 2010.
The government fell in February 2010, after Labour gave the cabinet a deadline to confirm it would withdraw all 1,600 Dutch soldiers no later than December 2010 and the CDA and the CU refused. NATO filed an official request for the extension of the Dutch mission in the beginning of 2010.
The CDA suffered severe losses in the resulting June elections and fell from first to fourth place. Mr Balkenende resigned and Mr Verhagen now heads the Christian Democrats as a junior coalition partner in a right-wing minority cabinet with the conservative VVD and parliamentary support from Geert Wilder’s far-right Freedom Party.
Serbia and Mladic
The WikiLeaks document also shows Mr Verhagen was dissatisfied with Serbian cooperation with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague and Belgrade’s commitment to capturing former Bosnian-Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, held responsible for the Srebrenica massacre.
Mr Verhagen said the Serbs were only interested in joining the EU and were not consistent in their statements. “They say one thing in person, something else to the international press, and again something different to their own people.”
The Netherlands led resistance to Serbia’s efforts to join the EU.
Netherlands as groundbreaker
The foreign ministers also spoke about the Middle East peace process. Mr Verhagen expressed concern about Iran and told Ms Clinton how pleased he was that the Netherlands was invited to attend the G20 meeting on the global economy in Pittsburg in September 2009. Ms Clinton praised the Netherlands’ role in international development and said the Dutch were groundbreakers on this front.
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
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Go Geert Wilders! The Netherlands will not be one of the best countries in the world if it lights its own ass on fire. Geert Wilders is right. When Intolerance threatens to destroy, tolerance must cut out its limits. Tolerance must be protected. It will not be de facto!
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