A retired U.S. general's claim that gay Dutch soldiers were partly to blame for allowing Europe's worst massacre since World War II has sparked outrage in the Netherlands.
Retired Gen. John Sheehan on Thursday told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., that gay soldiers weakened the Dutch army, which failed to prevent Serb forces massacring some 8,000 Muslim men in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.
Dutch government officials reacted angrily on Friday to claims by a retired U.S. general that Dutch forces were overrun in Srebrenica in 1995 in part because of the presence of gay soldiers.
At a U.S. congressional hearing on Thursday on allowing gay soldiers to serve openly in the military, former Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan said there was a link between having homosexuals in the Dutch forces and the massacre at Srebrenica.
Dutch caretaker Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop said Friday the claim was "damaging" and not worthy of a soldier. "I don't want to waste any more words on it," he said. The Ministry also added that gay Dutch soldiers routinely co-operate with the U.S. military in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.
Gen. Henk van den Breemen, Dutch Chief of Staff at the time of the Srebrenica genocide, called Sheehan's comments "total nonsense."
Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende called Sheehan's comments irresponsible and said at his weekly news conference that "these remarks should never have been made."
"Toward Dutch troops - homosexual or heterosexual - it is way off the mark to talk like that about people and the work they do under very difficult circumstances," he said.
Dutch press agency ANP quoted the head of the military union AFMP, Wim van den Burg, as saying Sheehan's comments were "ridiculous" and "out of the realm of fiction".
Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the United States, said in a statement, "I couldn't disagree more" with Sheehan, adding there was no evidence of his claims in the extensive record of research on Srebrenica.
Bosnian Serb forces overran lightly armed Dutch soldiers in the United Nations-designated enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 and subsequently massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
Reports on the hearing said Sheehan blamed a post-Cold War effort by European nations to "socialise" their forces by, among other things, letting gays serve.
"That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war. The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs," Sheehan said.
"The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them."
Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, asked: "Did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there?"
"Yes, they did. They included that as part of the problem," Sheehan said, according to a webcast on the website of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"That there were gay soldiers?" Levin then asked.
"That the combination was the liberalisation of the military, a net effect was basically social engineering."
With files from AP