The Labour party (PvdA) will ‘definitely’ make sure an investigation into political support for the Iraq war is part of negotiations on a future government, party leader Wouter Bos told the NRC this weekend.

Labour gave up its demand for an inquiry during the negotiations to form the present government at the end of 2006 and early 2007.
‘We continue to believe it [an inquiry] to be important,’ Bos said. The party’s position is on a par with the orthodox ChristenUnie’s opposition to gay marriage and the Christian Democrats opposition to a generous amnesty for long-term asylum seekers, Bos said in an interview.
The two Christian parties and Labour all made concessions when they formed the current coalition government.
‘We could not get agreement on it. But that is the only thing that happened. I take it as read that this subject will be in our next election manifesto. Perhaps then it will get through,’ Bos said.

Weapons
Last week, prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende (CDA) refused to echo US president George Bush’s ‘regret’ for the fact that incorrect information was published in 2003 about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
This information was used to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Balkenende repeated his standpoint that the Netherlands had given political support to the invasion of Iraq because the country’s leader at the time, Saddam Hussein, had refused to comply with United Nation resolutions. The Dutch decision was therefore not based directly on the presence or otherwise of weapons of mass destruction, he said.