Well Done! Taliban collapsed the Dutch Govt !

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Dutch Government Falls Over Extension of Afghan Stay (Update2)
February 20, 2010, 11:06 AM EST

(Adds government comment on new elections in fourth paragraph, NATO comment in ninth paragraph.)

By Jurjen van de Pol and Maud van Gaal

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Dutch government collapsed for a fifth time since April 2002 after the Labor Party refused a NATO request to extend the country’s military stay in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.

“Where trust is lacking, an attempt to reach an agreement on content is doomed to fail in advance,” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said today after a 16-hour Cabinet meeting in The Hague. “It would just be a prelude to new controversies in the future.”

Balkenende offered the resignation of Labor Party ministers to Queen Beatrix and put the functions of the remaining Cabinet members at her disposal, spokesman Henk Brons said by telephone today.

Christian Union Deputy Prime Minister Andre Rouvoet said parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2011 may be brought forward because reconciliation between the three coalition parties is unlikely, Public Broadcaster NOS reported today. According to Dutch law, the vote should take place within 83 days of a resignation.

The election outcome may shift the power balance in the Netherlands, with the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, the lawmaker who made a film linking the Koran to violence, overtaking Labor as the second-biggest party after Balkenende’s Christian Democratic Alliance, according to a poll by Synovate on Feb. 18. Labor last year ruled out forming a coalition government with Wilders.

Dropping in Poll

Balkenende’s Christian Democratic Alliance would lose nine seats in parliament, allowing it to provide 32 of the 150 lawmakers, if elections were held today, according to the poll. Two weeks ago, the party held 34 seats in the survey.

With municipal elections scheduled in just over a week, the Labor Party is set to gain from opposing the military presence in Uruzgan, winning 21 parliament seats in this week’s poll, up from 20 seats in the previous survey. Labor is still 12 seats from the 33 it gained in the last elections.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization asked the Netherlands this month to prolong its military presence in Uruzgan with fewer than the current 2,000 troops to help train Afghan forces. The mission was scheduled to end this year.

“This is a Dutch decision and NATO fully respects that,’ spokesman James Appathurai said by telephone. “The secretary- general still believes that the best way forward for the overall NATO mission would be if it were to include a new, smaller Dutch mission to build on the successes they’ve had and support the transition” to Afghan leadership.

August Exit

The Netherlands will exit Uruzgan by August, Defense State Secretary Jack de Vries of the Christian Democratic Alliance told Dutch broadcaster NOS today.

Twenty-one Dutch soldiers have died in Afghanistan since an initial contingent of 220 infantry troops was deployed in Kabul in 2002. The troops are part of a NATO-led mission fighting against Taliban insurgents. The government promised parliament last year to decide on the military stay before March 1, two days before municipal elections.

U.S. President Barack Obama has authorized 50,000 reinforcements for Afghanistan to reverse Taliban gains in the war that began in October 2001. Currently around 100,000 U.S. and allied troops are deployed in Afghanistan.

Dutch support for the deployment is waning. About 36 percent of the population opposed the mission in January, up from 32 percent in December, while the number of supporters declined to 33 percent from 38 percent, according to a monthly poll by the Defense Ministry.

Fourth Resignation

The fall of his fourth government is a setback for Balkenende, 53, who in November was passed over for the job of first European Union president. A former professor of Christian philosophy, Balkenende was sworn in to lead his first Cabinet in 2002, just two months after right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated. The three-party coalition survived 87 days. Balkenende’s fourth Cabinet took office in February 2007.

In April 2002, then-Labor Prime Minister Wim Kok’s coalition with the VVD and D66 resigned after a report by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation concluded the Dutch army wasn’t prepared for its role in defending refugees in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica from a massacre in 1995.


--With assistance from Jeroen Molenaar in Amsterdam and James G. Neuger in Brussels. Editors: Sara Marley, Jason Carey

To contact the reporter on this story: Jurjen van de Pol in Amsterdam at +31-20-589-8526 or [email protected]; Maud van Gaal in Amsterdam at +31-20-589-8530 or [email protected].

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at +44-20-7673-2058 or [email protected]; David Merritt at +44-20-7673-2639 or [email protected].

 

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http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_492783.html



Feb 20, 2010
Dutch PM offers resignation

THE HAGUE - THE Dutch premier offered his government's resignation to Queen Beatrix on Saturday, a spokesman said as a spat over the country's Afghan military mission scuppered the ruling coalition.

'Contact has taken place' by telephone with the Queen, who is holidaying in Austria, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's spokesman Henk Brons told AFP.

Asked whether Mr Balkenende had officially tendered the government's resignation to Beatrix, the constitutional head of state, Mr Brons replied: 'Yes'.

Mr Balkenende announced the government's collapse on Saturday after 16 hours of talks failed to save his three-year-old centre-left coalition, the fourth Dutch government to crumble since 2002.

The PvdA Labour Party withdrew from the government, insisting that the Netherlands' military mission in Afghanistan must end this year as planned, and that the government should reject a Nato request for a one-year extension. -- AFP

 

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hI-lTRcT28jDu7xJ3phsBQSrWmyQ

Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan

(UKPA) – 29 minutes ago

Dutch troops will begin leaving southern Afghanistan in August, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said.

Speaking a day after his coalition government collapsed over the issue, Mr Balkenende said the Netherlands will end its role in Uruzgan province, where 21 Dutch soldiers have been killed since the mission was first deployed in 2006.

"Our task as the lead nation ends in August this year," he said on Dutch television.

A marathon cabinet meeting that broke up before dawn ended with the walkout of the second largest party in the government, Labour, which accused the dominant Christian Democratic Alliance of reneging on a 2007 agreement to bring the troops home this year.

The premier is to formally advise Queen Beatrix that he no longer commands a majority in parliament and will hand in the resignations of the six Labour Party ministers. That will begin the process likely to lead to an election in May, one year ahead of schedule.

The impending drawdown was clearly bitter for Mr Balkenende, who argued forcefully to remain in Uruzgan on a scaled-down training mission for Afghan security forces. He repeated that it would be valueless to conduct such training missions outside Uruzgan.

Under the Dutch system, a caretaker cabinet cannot take actions that lack consensus, and therefore Mr Balkenende said he was bound by an earlier decision to relinquish the command position in Uruzgan as of August 1.

The pullout will take up to three months, and the last of its soldiers will be gone from the volatile province by December.

The parliament was expected to hold another debate on Afghanistan shortly, taking up the question of whether the Air Force could deploy F-16s, helicopters and headquarters staff and whether development workers and even diplomats could be stationed outside Kabul, the capital.

But the current mood in parliament is hardly amenable to a continued presence there. In the debate last Thursday, a clear majority of the 150-member house was in favour of pulling out, with the split laid bare between Balkenende and his finance minister, Labour Party leader Wouter Bos.

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