Mr Balkenende rejected calls to resign last night and said that he disagreed with the commission. "The Cabinet's view has always been that a new Security Council resolution [authorising the invasion] was desirable but not necessary," he said... Allard de Rooi, of Transparency about Iraq, said: "I cannot imagine a world in which the Prime Minister of a Western country just ignores the verdict of senior judges in a inquiry which he ordered. "He has got to resign. He is saying that there are two kinds of law -- one for him and one for the rest of the world."
Mr Balkenende rejected calls to resign last night and said that he disagreed with the commission. "The Cabinet's view has always been that a new Security Council resolution [authorising the invasion] was desirable but not necessary," he said...
Allard de Rooi, of Transparency about Iraq, said: "I cannot imagine a world in which the Prime Minister of a Western country just ignores the verdict of senior judges in a inquiry which he ordered.
"He has got to resign. He is saying that there are two kinds of law -- one for him and one for the rest of the world."
The Labour Party, a member of Mr Balkenende's tri-party coalition, says the Davids report is "disturbing" and that Mr Balkenende's response is not on behalf of the Labour Party. Mariëtta Hamer, leader of Labour's parliamentary party, says she was "unpleasantly surprised" by Mr Balkenende's response to the report. Labour has called on Mr Balkenende to emphasise the difference between the 2003 cabinet - the party was in opposition at the time - and the current one. The party has called for another response to the criticisms in the Davids report this week.
