United Nations resolutions on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programme were not a sufficient mandate to justify the invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain, a Dutch government committee said on Tuesday.

The committee was set up last year to investigate the Dutch position, following mounting pressure from MPs and the press. The Netherlands gave political but not military support to the 2003 invasion, a decision largely based on claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Those claims later turned out to be false.
The report contains a long list of criticisms of the government of the day – a coalition between the Christian Democrats and free market Liberals VVD.

Isolation
‘The Dutch government lent its political support to a war whose purpose was not consistent with Dutch government policy,’ the report states.
It states that prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende was largely isolated from the decision making process and left the Dutch position up to the then foreign minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. According to the Telegraaf’s report, De Hoop Scheffer drew up the Dutch line in a 45-minute meeting with civil servants in August 2002.
The report says Dutch intelligence agencies had largely based their reports on information from the US and British secret services and that other, more nuanced assessments of the risks posed by Iraq’s weapons programme were ‘not reflected’ by the relevant ministers and departments.
‘Rather, ministers and departments extracted those statements …. that were consistent with the stance already adopted,’ the report said.
Parliament
The report highlights the lack of parliamentary debate on threat posed by Iraq before the invasion and says that after the war, ministers played up the weight given to Dutch security service reports.
It says the government did not disclose to parliament the full contents of the US request for military cooperation in November 2002. ‘It is apparent that right up to the time of the invasion there was confusion as to what the US had asked of the Netherlands and what the policy was,’ the report’s conclusions state.
On March 17, 2003, Balkenende told other party leaders ‘no action would be taken to include the Netherlands as a member of the US-led coalition’.
US support
Yet the Netherlands was listed among the coalition members because the foreign affairs ministry had failed to inform the Dutch ambassador in Washington of the position. The US subsequently benefited from the political backing expressed by the Netherlands and other countries because it increased support at a global level, the report stated.
Commission chairman Willbrord Davids stressed that the committee had had full cooperation from ministers and civil servants. The report does not give a political judgment, Davids said. ‘That is up to parliament.’
International lawyer Philippe Sands, who gave evidence to the Dutch inquiry, told the Guardian newspaper: ‘There has been no other independent assessment on the legality of the war in Iraq and the findings of this inquiry are unambiguous. It concludes that the case argued by the Dutch and British governments… could not reasonably be argued.’

For the conclusions in English, click here

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