Saturday, 20 Apr 2024

U.S. Ambassador to Netherlands Faces Questions About Political Interference

BRUSSELS — One of President Trump’s most outspoken ambassadors has found himself in a new controversy after co-hosting a fund-raiser for a populist far-right Dutch political party in the American Embassy in the Netherlands. The act appears to breach diplomatic protocol because of its involvement with domestic politics in the host nation.

The ambassador, Pete Hoekstra — whose 2017 appointment to the role drew criticism over his earlier remarks that the Netherlands had “no-go zones” of Muslim-ruled enclaves — hosted a party at the embassy on Sept. 10 along with the Forum for Democracy Party, a group that is euroskeptic, identitarian and highly critical, to say the least, of Islam’s influence in Europe.

A native of the Netherlands, Mr. Hoekstra, 66, has both amused and annoyed many in the country with comments that align with the views of the Forum for Democracy. A conservative former Republican congressman from Michigan who helped found the Tea Party caucus, he was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands by President Trump.

To host a political fund-raiser would, on its face, be interference in domestic politics and a violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

The State Department has not yet responded to a request for comment, though officials said that the episode was being overplayed and that the embassy engaged with many political parties.

An invitation to the event was sent out in the name of “the Forum for Democracy and Pete Hoekstra,” according to the Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, which earlier reported the story. Many of the approximately 40 guests were entrepreneurs, and the invitations included contact details for the party’s head of fund-raising, the magazine said.

Some Dutch lawmakers on the center-left were highly critical. Sjoerd Wiemer Sjoerdsma, the foreign-policy spokesman for Democrats 66, a liberal party in the coalition government, on Tuesday called for the Foreign Ministry to investigate whether Mr. Hoekstra had “facilitated a fund-raising event for a political party.”

Sven Koopmans, the foreign-policy spokesman for Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, was less exercised. He noted in Parliament that Mr. Hoekstra had worked on events with other political parties, but said that if the embassy had been used for a fund-raising event for Thierry Baudet, the Forum for Democracy leader, or if Mr. Baudet had used the event for those purposes, “that would not be proper.”

Mr. Hoekstra’s appointment to the diplomatic role drew controversy over remarks he made in 2015 that the Netherlands had “no-go zones” of Muslim enclaves outside government control and that politicians and cars were being set on fire there because of radical Islam. He denied having made those remarks, but later conceded that he had done so and issued an apology.

Mr. Baudet, 37, founded his party in 2016 as a right-wing organization more palatable to the middle class than the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders. Mr. Baudet has good relations with the far-right nationalist Vlaams Belang party in Flanders, and while his party holds only two out of 150 seats in Parliament, it did well in regional elections last year and is rising in opinion polls.

Mr. Baudet favors the Netherlands exiting the European Union and adding limits on immigration. He has also been highly critical of the influence of Islam, though unlike Mr. Wilders, he says he does not wish to ban the Quran.

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