THE HAGUE, 08/03/01 - The leftwing Greens (GroenLinks) want Prime Minister Wim Kok to give his views on Crown Prince Willem-Alexander's remarks about the Dutch press. The socialists (SP) are also pressing Kok to explain the comments the Prince made in New York on Tuesday in connection with the Zorreguieta affair.

Willem-Alexander considers the Dutch press to be one-sided in its reporting on Jorge Zorreguieta, the father of his girlfriend Maxima. As an example, he mentioned the letter published on 27 February in the Argentine newspaper La Nacion. Herein, former dictator Jorge Videla wrote that the interviews for the book El Dictator never took place. The book maintains that Maxima's father was involved in Videla's coup. Later, Jorge Zorreguieta became state secretary and then minister under Videla.

GroenLinks wants Kok to say whether he knew in advance about the Crown Prince's criticism of the press. The Dutch association of journalists NVJ is also interested in this. "Crown Prince Willem-Alexander may of course find the reporting one-sided, but we do not agree with him," NVJ chairman R. Abram declared yesterday. But he did say that the Prince was subtler than his mother. "The Queen recently claimed that lies ruled in the press," Abram said.

Jorge Videla was the leader of the military junta in Argentina from 1976 to 1981. According to the authors of the book El Dictator, he has said that he had no regrets at all about his regime, which cost the lives of at least 30,000 dissidents.

Videla denies this. In his letter to the newspaper, he pointed out that in written letters to parliament he had openly expressed his regret for "the horrors of a war". He claimed that these were caused by "extremist forces that carried out 21,800 destructive actions in the course of a decade".

The Crown Prince also stated in New York he had no objection to the discussions on the issue. He understands perfectly well that he is the subject of this. "The monarchy is always a subject for discussion, it is a company constantly in the process of modernization. I am part of this, and therefore a subject for discussion, but I cannot say too much about this in view of the ministerial responsibility," he stated.