International

SP Member of Parliament and spokesman on foreign affairs Harry van Bommel has asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen for an explanation regarding an alleged plan for the Netherlands to invade Suriname with the aim of overthrowing the 1980s government of Desi Bouterse. The plan is discussed in a new biography of former US President Ronald Reagan.

'I don't know what is more shocking, the cooperation of European countries in the violation of the European Convention on Human Rights or the fact that these were kept secret from their parliaments'. This was the reaction of CDA (Dutch Christian Democrat) Senator René van der Linden, Chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to the report commissioned by the Assembly which concluded that the CIA, in cooperation with NATO and European states had set up secret prisons in which people were illegally confined, interrogated and tortured. SP Senator Tiny Kox, Chair of the United European Left group in PACE, argues that all European governments must now come completely clean over the issue. “This game of hide-and- seek has gone on long enough,” he says.