The United Nations resolution which Saddam Hussein refused to comply with was not a sufficient mandate to justify the invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain, a Dutch government committee said on Tuesday.

The Netherlands gave political but not military support to the invasion, a decision largely based on claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Those claims later turned out to be false.
The report said prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende was not on top of the Dutch position. The then-foreign affairs minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer took charge of the Dutch involvement and he supported the invasion. This meant that more ‘nuanced’ information from the Dutch security service about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction was given less weight than that provided by the British and US authorities, the report said.
Pressure mounted on the government to hold a formal parliamentary inquiry into Iraq in early 2009 after a string of revelations – particularly about security service failings. Prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende eventually agreed to set up a commission to investigate events instead.
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.’

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