AFGHANISTAN: The Dutch parliament was poised to vote last night to send more troops to Afghanistan in a controversial move that would give a welcome boost to Nato.
The vote, which was delayed by a lengthy debate, threatens the stability of the coalition government in the Netherlands and highlights growing unease about Dutch involvement in the Nato- led Afghanistan mission. Last year Nato requested a Dutch force of 1,400 men to help it to push further into Afghanistan as part of its mission to fight terrorism there.
However, the Netherlands delayed its decision to deploy troops late last year amid public concern about the mission, which proposes to send 6,000 Nato troops to Uruzgan province - a centre for the Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgency. The delay to the mission has threatened to weaken Nato at a time when it is still seeking a valid role following the collapse of communism.
In a sign of mounting concern about the Dutch decision, several high-profile figures including Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, UN secretary general Kofi Annan and Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, this week urged lawmakers to sanction the mission.
"This is a crucial vote for the Netherlands and Nato," said Prof Rob de Wijk, director of the Clingendael Institute for International Relations. "There are very few alternative sources of well- trained and equipped soldiers available to Nato at the moment. For the Netherlands a vote against deployment would undermine its own military. After all, what is the point of having armed forces if you can't use them." But the question of deploying more soldiers to Afghanistan raised huge public concerns, where even the memory of the Srebrenica massacre was invoked in the debate. In 1995 Dutch soldiers were forced to abandon up to 8,000 Muslims who had sought their protection in the Srebrenica enclave due to lack of air support casting a shadow over its military.
The deployment is also dividing the coalition in the Netherlands where the two main parties in the centre-right government want to send the soldiers to join troops from Britain and Canada but the liberal D66 party opposes the troop deployment.
"It's time for us to show some guts, let's do that. Fighting terrorism is in the Netherlands' interest and in the interest of Afghanistan," said Hans van Baalen, of the free market liberal VVD, the third largest party in the parliament.
However, public concerns about the dangers of operating in southern Afghanistan coupled with unease over the severity of the military action already undertaken by US forces in Afghanistan in its "enduring freedom" campaign have caused lawmakers to question the deployment.
The smallest party in the coalition D66, which is trying to boost its public profile ahead of a 2007 election, had initially threatened to pull out of government over the deployment.
The party was primarily concerned with how reconstruction work - the central mission of Dutch troops to date in Afghanistan - was possible in unstable Uruzgan.
"Is this, in fact, not simply a terrorism-fighting mission disguised as a reconstruction effort and thus limited in its ability to act?" D66 parliamentarians asked in an open letter.
Other lawmakers said any prisoners taken on the mission should be treated humanely and asked the Dutch government to set aside more money for reconstruction.
In recent weeks the Dutch public had grown less hostile to the deployment as international calls for their help have grown.