The Dutch government collapsed yesterday after Prime Minister Wim Kok's Cabinet resigned en-masse over a report condemning the Netherlands' failure to prevent the worst massacre of the Bosnian war.
Kok's coalition stepped down after a crisis meeting to discuss the fallout from an official report last week which blamed politicians and military top brass for the failure of its UN peacekeepers to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
In Srebrenica, a Bosnian town close to the Serbian border, 110 lightly armed Dutch troops from the multinational UN force were assigned to protect Muslim residents and refugees in what had been designated a "safe area" for them. In the event the Serbs took the town without a shot being fired.
The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation report, commissioned by the government five years ago, condemned the Dutch troops for unwittingly assisting in "ethnic cleansing" by helping the Serbs organize the final exodus of thousands of Muslims from the town -- women and children to Muslim territory but men to their deaths, mostly by shooting in fields and barns.
But it reserved its harshest criticism for the political and military leadership for sending the troops to Srebrenica with ill-defined goals and a weak mandate.
"I will go to the Queen and hand over the resignation of all ministers and junior ministers," Kok said.
He said he would announce the government's dissolution to head of state Queen Beatrix before going to parliament to say his 29-member coalition was resigning over the foreign policy crisis.
The queen later called on Kok's collapsed coalition to form an interim caretaker government until a new government is formed after general elections on May 15.
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