Dutch prime minister Mr Wim Kok's government resigned today for its shortcomings during a catastrophic peacekeeping mission which failed to prevent the worst massacre of the Bosnian war seven years ago.
The cabinet's mass resignation came within days of a damning report condemning Dutch politicians and the military for sending its troops on an impossible mission to protect the Srebrenica enclave where up to 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered in 1995.
"The international community has fallen short in offering sufficient protection to the people in the so-called 'safe area'," Mr Kok told a hushed parliament after all 29 cabinet ministers in his coalition resigned following a crisis meeting.
"The international community, in which the Netherlands played a special role in this respect, appeared unable to prevent the enclave from falling and the genocide by the Bosnian Serbs that followed," the outgoing leader of the center-left cabinet said.
But Mr Kok was adamant that blame for the grizzly massacre rested with the Bosnian Serbs, who overran the enclave in July 1995, referring to fugitive war crimes suspect and former Bosnian Serb military leader General Ratko Mladic.
Dutch head of state Queen Beatrix immediately called on Mr Kok to form an interim caretaker government from the bones of his three-party coalition until a new administration was installed after general elections on May 15th.
Almost half the Netherland's 19 post-war coalitions have collapsed prematurely. But the speed of the latest crash with only a month to go to elections took even seasoned political observers by surprise.
An official report last week into the Dutch role in the fall of Srebrenica slammed its top army brass and politicians for unwittingly collaborating with ethnic cleansing when Bosnian Serb forces overran the supposedly UN-protected enclave.
In Srebrenica, a Bosnian town close to the Serbian border, 110 lightly-armed Dutch troops from the multinational UN force were assigned to protect Muslim residents and refugees in what had been designated a "safe area" for them. The Serbs took the town without a shot being fired.
The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) report, commissioned by the government five years ago, condemned the Dutch troops for unwittingly assisting in "ethnic cleansing" by helping the Serbs organize the final exodus of thousands of Muslims from the town -- women and children to Muslim territory but men to their deaths, mostly by shooting in fields and barns.
But it reserved its harshest criticism for the political and military leadership for sending the troops to Srebrenica with ill-defined goals and a weak mandate.
The chaotic end to Mr Kok's coalition between his PvdA Labour Party, Liberal VVD and centrist D66 cast a long shadow over the career of a popular prime minister, credited with slashing unemployment and creating prosperity.
The government was sent reeling last week by the long awaited NIOD report, which caused a heated political debate about Dutch accountability at Srebrenica, prompting speculation from senior political sources that a number of top ministers were ready to resign to appease public disquiet.
Mr Kok's coalition has been struggling in opinion polls ahead of elections next month, when power could shift in The Hague, the seat of Dutch government as well as the UN war crimes tribunal currently trying ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic for alleged war crimes in the Balkans in the 1990s.
Polls indicate his center-left government could be set to lose out if a center-right alliance is formed after the elections. Dutch parties traditionally jockey for position in talks to form coalitions after an election.