April 17, 2002	Wednesday	Safar 3, 142

THE HAGUE, April 16: The Dutch cabinet of Prime Minister Wim Kok resigned on Tuesday over an official report condemning a government failure to prevent the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war.

“I will go to the Queen and hand over the resignation of all ministers and junior ministers,” Kok told journalists in the Hague.

The report last week sharply condemned his cabinet for failing to prevent the most notorious massacre of the Bosnian war in 1995, when Dutch peacekeepers stood by as Bosnian Serbs massacred some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica enclave.

Kok’s coalition government earlier met for a crisis meeting to discuss the fallout from a damaging report last week which blamed politicians and military top brass for the failure of its U.N. peacekeepers to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The crisis has cast a shadow over the career of a popular prime minister credited with slashing unemployment and creating prosperity.

Kok — sober, hardworking and informal — enjoyed broad popularity across the Dutch political spectrum after slashing unemployment and boosting prosperity during his eight years in power and was feted by fellow European centre-left leaders.

Kok, 63, who headed the PvdA Labour Party, forged strong friendships with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. President Bill Clinton during a time when they were hailed as pioneers of the moderate centre-left “Third Way.”

High office did not dent his down-to-earth enjoyment of football, camping and hearty food. He hated black-tie formality, shunning ostentation in his public and private life. His ordinary ways were extraordinarily attractive to the Dutch.

Kok, tipped as a potential successor to Romano Prodi as European Union president, was not regarded as a mover and a shaker in power. But his skill at settling conflicts and hammering out compromise earned him respect at home and abroad.

Pro-European in outlook, former trade unionist Kok won widespread praise for helping to seal European economic and monetary union at the Amsterdam summit in 1997.

“Work, work, work and more work,” was what Kok promised from the seemingly unwieldy first coalition his party wove with junior partners from the Liberal VVD and D66 centrists in 1994.

And work was what it helped deliver. During his first term, the economy went from strength to strength as the Netherlands created jobs at about the same pace as neighbouring Germany was losing them.

Unions were encouraged by the government to accept wage restraint in return for jobs. But Kok also drew fire for cutting spending on health, pensions, education and child benefits to use the money to create employment.

Born in the village of Bergambacht near Rotterdam on September 29, 1938, the carpenter’s son was shaped by his childhood experience of the hunger and austerity of Nazi occupation.

His high standing at home and abroad was eclipsed, however, by his government’s role in failing to prevent the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two.

The Srebrenica massacre plunged the Netherlands into soul-searching over the role of its peacekeepers in allowing Bosnian Serbs to capture Srebrenica and massacre the Muslims.

Kok, credited with having his finger on the pulse of the Dutch national mood, may have wished to depart on a high note after May’s general elections.

Instead he leaves under the long shadow of a tragedy played out far from the placid corridors of the Hague government building where his career came to a bleak close on Tuesday.—Reuters