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29 August 2013

Five questions on possible intervention in Syria

A number of different countries are threatening a military attack on Syria. The SP does not support these plans. Below, we explain why.

28 August 2013

SP leader Emile Roemer in Brazil: Learning from each other, inspiring each other

On 9th August SP leader Emile Roemer arrived in Brazil for a working visit in the company of the party’s National Secretary Hans van Heijningen and Brazil specialist Peter Runhaar. Below are extracts from their account of their experiences in Latin America’s biggest nation.

27 August 2013

Syria: Van Bommel demands recall of parliament over war threats

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel wants to see an immediate parliamentary debate with Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans over the threat of war against Syria. ‘The preparations for war are sufficient to justify the rapid holding of a debate.’ He says. ‘In Britain they are considering recalling Parliament in order to discuss military action. The SP wants to know what requests have been made of the Netherlands and what the standpoint of the government is.’

22 August 2013

Van Bommel calls for immediate UN enquiry into use of poison gas in Syria

An independent United Nations enquiry must be launched as quickly as possible into the incident in Syria in which chemical weapons may have been employed. Otherwise the chance exists that this will be used as a pretext to launch a war against Syria, warns Van Bommel, an SP Member of Parliament and spokesman on foreign affairs. ‘President Obama has already in the recent past cited the use of chemical weapons as a possible reason to invade Syria,’ he recalls. ‘A repeat of the invasion of Iraq must be prevented. In that case there turned out to have been no weapons of mass destruction, despite these having been used as the pretext to invade. An independent enquiry is essential in this propaganda war.’

22 August 2013

Merkies: Where can we find the honest story about Greece?

In the opinion of SP Member of Parliament Arnold Merkies, Greece has only been brought deeper into difficulties by last year’s emergency package. ‘At the end of last year Greece once again received aid,’ says Merkies. Referring to the Dutch Finance Minister who has since become Chair of the Eurozone group, he said that ‘debt restructuring was then unnecessary, according to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, because there was now a sustainable Greek sovereign debt. Now he says that renewed aid is needed immediately. Parliament is being repeatedly seduced into voting to agree to aid on the basis of unrealistic expectations about the Greek economy and the sustainability of its debt.’

14 August 2013

Merkies: 'Netherlands is falling further behind because of government’s policy choices’

'Short-sighted austerity policies mean that the Netherlands is now at the bottom of almost every league table.’ This was SP Member of Parliament Arnold Merkies’s reaction to the latest economic statistics and assessments from the CPB, an official, non-partisan body charged with analysing the effects of current and projected government policies. ‘If you look around, you can see that in most countries the economy is slowly picking up. In the Netherlands, however, we are falling further behind as a consequence of spiralling spending cuts and the resulting growing insecurity.’

International