Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has survived the parliamentary debate on the report of the Davids Commission into the process by which the Netherlands lent its political support to the war in Iraq.

The debate was quite fierce by Dutch standards and five opposition parties submitted a motion of no-confidence in the prime minister. The motion was defeated, as was a motion calling for a parliamentary inquiry.

Green Left, the Socialist Party, Democrats 66, the Freedom Party and the Animal Rights Party accused the prime minister of providing parliament with inaccurate, incomplete and selective information at crucial junctures in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Green Left leader Femke Halsema called this "a mortal sin". Other opposition politicians called Mr Balkenende's actions "disturbing" and "shameful".  Democrat leader Alexander Pechtold said the cabinet's reaction to the Davids report deserved the "annual hot air prize". 

As he has throughout the debate, the prime minister insisted he had done nothing wrong, given the information he had to work with at the time. He conceded that not everything has gone as well as it might have, but repeated that the information provided by the cabinet had not "in the political sense" been incomplete or inaccurate. He also rejected the conclusion of the Davids Commission that there was no basis in international law for the war and that the cabinet was therefore wrong to lend it the political support of the Netherlands.

Coalition partner Labour was initially in favour of a parliamentary inquiry but parliamentary party chair Mariette Hamer accepted the reactions of the cabinet and the prime minister to the Davids report. 
 

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