HILVERSUM, 06/01/07 - Former Defence Minister Joris Voorhoeve says the US in 1995 deliberately held off from taking action against the threatened Serbian attack on the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica.

Between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred at the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. Poorly armed Dutch UN troops were powerless against the Serbs. In 2002, the then Dutch government resigned as a gesture of partial responsibility for the tragedy.

Voorhoeve, minister at the time of the fall, said Friday on radio programme Argos that the sole responsibility for the massacre lay with the Bosnian-Serbian army leader Mladic and his people. But from the US side, there was no willingness to defend the enclave with air support, and this policy was supported by the British and French, he stressed.

Voorhoeve urged a reassessment of the conclusion of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) that the attack on Srebrenica could not have been foreseen. The NIOD report sparked the government's resignation in 2002.

A NIOD spokesman said he could not understand Voorhoeve's remarks. "That the Serbians were planning something bad was clear. But whether it would first have been enclave x or y was not clear."

On top of this, air support is spoken of too easily, according to NIOD. "They had to cope with mountains, the weather and citizens that were close by." The fact that the French did not participate also had to do with French hostages that they did not want to endanger, the spokesman added.