International

'If it swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and waggles like a duck, then I’d call it a duck. The Minister of Defence must have been thinking this when he spoke to Vrij Nederland.' SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel was referring, during this evening’s parliamentary debate with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the Minister of Defence himself, to a recent interview given by the said minister, Hans Hillen to a leading Dutch political weekly. In the interview, Hillen said that it was ‘strange that the mission in Kunduz cannot be called a military mission.’

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel describes himself as ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the verdict of the court in The Hague in a case brought under Dutch law by seven widows from the Indonesian village of Rawagede. The court today ruled that the Netherlands is responsible for war crimes committed in 1947 against the male population of the village. Van Bommel, who was in court to hear the ruling, described it as a ‘historic verdict which, for the seven widows, has come not a moment too soon.’