Dutch gay rights group halts suit against US general

Mar 30, 2010, 10:17 GMT

Amsterdam - A gay rights organization in the Netherlands on Tuesday said it would not take legal action against a former US general over his controversial recent comments about gays in the Dutch military.

John Sheehan told the US Senate Armed Services Committee on March 18 that officials from the Dutch military had told him the presence of gays within its ranks had contributed to its failure to stop a massacre in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in 1995.

The Dutch government and military reacted angrily to the claim, with Prime Minister Jan Balkenende calling Sheehan's statement 'disgraceful, shameful and unacceptable.'

The Pink Army, a Dutch gay rights organization, threatened to sue Sheehan for slander and libel. A Dutch group representing homosexuals in the military joined the initiative.

On Tuesday, however, the Pink Army said it would not go to court after Sheehan, a top NATO commander in Bosnia in the 1990s, expressed regret over the remarks.

The Dutch Defence Ministry said Sheehan offered his apology on Monday night in a letter he sent to his former Dutch colleague, Henk van den Breemen.

The former general wrote that his memories of the discussions he had 15 years ago with Dutch colleagues concerning several social issues, were 'inaccurate.'

Sheehan also wrote that the fall of the Muslim enclave could not be attributed to any individual soldier, but that it was related to the NATO peacekeepers' mandate.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said outgoing Defence Minister Eimert van Middelkoop was pleased with the apology because it corrected a 'wrong image' and closed the matter.