Dutch troops forced home by political storm

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said yesterday that Dutch troops will begin leaving southern Afghanistan in August, since his caretaker government has no authority to accept a Nato request to stay on.

Speaking a day after his coalition government collapsed over the issue, Mr Balkenende said the Netherlands will end its role in Uruzgan province, where 21 Dutch soldiers have been killed since the mission was deployed in 2006.

"Our task as the lead nation ends in August this year," he said on Dutch television.

A marathon cabinet meeting that broke up before dawn on Saturday ended with the walkout of the second-largest party in the government, Labour, which accused the dominant Christian Democratic Alliance of reneging on a 2007 agreement to bring the troops home this year.

Today, the premier will formally advise Queen Beatrix that he no longer commands a majority in parliament and will hand in the resignations of the six Labour Party ministers. That will begin the process likely to lead to an election in May, one year ahead of schedule.

The impending drawdown was clearly bitter for Balkenende, who argued forcefully to remain in Uruzgan on a scaled-down training mission for Afghan security forces. He repeated yesterday that it would be valueless to conduct such training missions outside Uruzgan.

Under the Dutch system, a caretaker cabinet cannot take actions that lack consensus, and therefore Balkenende said he was bound by an earlier decision to relinquish the command position in Uruzgan from 1 August.

The pullout will take up to three months, and the last of its soldiers will be gone from the volatile province by December.

Earlier this month, Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen sent a letter to the Dutch government asking it to consider an extension of its mission to prepare the Afghan army and police to take responsibility for the province. Mr Balkenende charged that Labour went back on its agreement to at least examine several options for staying in Afghanistan.