.
Zijlstra lied when he claimed he “clearly” heard Putin say in 2006 that he wanted to add a few neighboring countries to “Greater Russia.” ...""I see no other option today than to hand in my resignation to his majesty the King," a tearful Zijlstra told MPs."
2/12/2018, “Dutch foreign minister admits lying about Putin comments,” Reuters, Bart H. Meijer, Amsterdam
“Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra admitted on Monday he had lied about hearing Russian President Vladimir Putin make comments about plans for a “greater Russia”, unleashing a storm of criticism.
“I told an untruth, it was unacceptable,” he told reporters….
While election campaigning two years ago [2016], Zijlstra said that in 2006 he had been at Putin’s dacha when he heard the Kremlin leader speak of plans for a “greater Russia” which would include some of Russia’s neighbors.
“…I could clearly hear Putin’s answer [in 2006] to the question about what he considered greater Russia,” Zijlstra told a gathering in 2016 of his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, which heads the new Dutch government.
“He said this included Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states, and, well, Kazakhstan would be ‘nice to have’,” he [Zijlstra] said in his speech, which was recorded on video.
But on Monday he acknowledged he had never been at the meeting with Putin and had heard of the [alleged] comments secondhand [by an unnamed person].
“I wasn’t present at the meeting in President Putin’s dacha,” the minister said in statement on Monday.
“The discussion [allegedly] did take place and someone [not named] who was there told me what President Putin [allegedly] said about greater Russia” [Zijlstra said]…
His admission led opposition parties to demand his resignation, but the governing parties stood by him.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Zijlstra had a made a “big mistake”, but remained a credible member of the government.
In a scathing editorial, the prominent daily business newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad called on the minister to step down.
“Staying on would undermine the credibility of the Cabinet. Not only in criticizing Russia, but also in the campaign against fake news,” it wrote.”…
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Added: From AP article on this story:
Based on repetition of the Dutch Minister’s slanderous lie about Putin, how many extra millions of US taxpayer dollars were diverted to the weapons industry that could’ve been spent on education or health care? Certainly millions of innocent Russian citizens weren’t helped by this hateful lie. The #1 target of all warmonger lies about Putin such as the Dutch Foreign Minister’s is of course US taxpayers without whom the Endless War Industry couldn’t exist.
2/13/2018, “Dutch foreign minister quits after lying about Putin meeting,” AFP, SBS.com/au
“New Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra resigned Tuesday [Feb. 2018], after admitting he had lied about his presence at a [2006] meeting…with Russian President Vladimir Putin…in Putin’s dacha which included Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s former chief executive…..Zijlstra had claimed…Putin “wants to go back to a ‘Greater Russia‘ and…that it included Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic States."…
“I have spoken about an incident of great importance, saying I was there in person, while that was not the case,” Zijlstra told MPs on Tuesday….
A former Shell contractor, Zijlstra had told members of his Liberal VVD party in 2016 that during the meeting Putin allegedly spoke about his definition of a “Greater Russia.”
Zijlstra’s appointment in October [2017] as foreign minister had raised eyebrows because of his perceived lack of diplomatic credentials.
But the Volkskrant [Dutch] newspaper said “his spin doctors” had used the story of the Putin meeting “to ward off criticism about his lack of foreign experience”….
“In the Netherlands, Russia is being blamed for disseminating disinformation. Dutch officials are constantly making such unfounded statements,“ it [the Russian Embassy] said in a statement.
Trying to attribute to Russia “great-power ambitions and the desire to recreate ‘the Soviet Empire‘ do not hold up,” the embassy added, saying such claims were “conceived in someone’s inflamed imagination.”…
As he left the chamber he [Zijlstra] was given a hug by [PM Mark] Rutte, who then came under fire from other MPs about how long he had known about his minister’s deception."…
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Added: Dutch government funded terrorists: Dutch government secretly funded 22 Islamic terrorist groups in Syria from 2015-2018, including Jabbat al-Shamiya, described by prosecutors as salafist jihadists, a ‘criminal organisation of terrorist intent’. This funding was allegedly not known to members of parliament:
9/11/2018, “Dutch funded ‘jihadist’ group in Syria, terror trial may now falter," Dutchnews.nl
“The Dutch government has been supporting an armed [Islamic terrorist] group in Syria which has been branded a terrorist organisation by the public prosecution department, current affairs show Nieuwsuur reported on Monday night.
The Netherlands provided uniforms and pick-up trucks to the group known as Jabbat al-Shamiya in 2017, the programme said. Next week, a Dutch jihadi faces court for being a member of the same group. The equipment was sent to the group as part of a secret programme providing ‘non-lethal’ assistance to 22 [Islamic terrorist] rebel groups in Syria from 2015 to the beginning of this year [2018].
According to the public prosecutor Jabbat al-Shamiya is ‘salafist and jihadistic’, ‘strives for the setting up of the caliphate’ and can be qualified as nothing else but a ‘criminal organisation of terrorist intent’. The fact that the government has supported the organisation in the past could upset the court case, according to legal experts.
‘A court could easily say that it would not convict someone for doing something which had been facilitated by the state,’
Geert-Jan Knops told broadcaster NOS. Michiel Pestman, who represents
the man facing trial in three weeks, told NOS the Nieuwsuur claims
undermine the public prosecution’s case.
The Netherlands has admitted funding Syrian [Islamic terrorist] rebel groups but has always maintained they were moderate. [In the US, so-called “moderate” terrorists include child beheaders.] However, this weekend foreign minister Stef Blok and trade minister Sigrid Kaag sent a briefing to MPs explaining that the Netherlands
has stopped funding the Syrian [Islamic terrorists] opposition in the
[so-called] civil war [funded by foreigners] against president Assad.
The chance that [foreign-backed terrorist] rebel forces will be able to
win the [so-called] civil war is, the ministers say, now ‘extremely
limited’.
Dutch support for the [Islamic terrorist] rebels has ‘not had the desired effects’, the ministers said. The Netherlands had set aside €70m [US $76.5 million]
to fund the [Islamic terrorist] opposition. Nieuwsuur says the letter
was sent to MPs after it had confronted them with its findings. ‘These
findings strengthen our conviction that the decision to stop the funding
was the correct one,’ the foreign ministry said in a statement.
MPs said they were shocked by the Nieuwsuur broadcast and have called on ministers to explain how this could happen. Much of the information has been declared secret but MPs still want ministers to explain to parliament what has been done. ‘What appears to have happened is exactly what we were afraid of,’ said Christen Unie leader Gert-Jan Seegers. In
2015, the CU attempted to have the financial support to Syrian
[terrorist] rebel groups stopped but failed to get sufficient support. Nieuwsuur later published more allegations, claiming that other groups funded by the Netherlands committed human rights violations and war crimes. The broadcaster said it bases its claims on interviews with some 100 ‘rebel leaders’ and people involved with the programme.”
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