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Gay news: Pink Army's intention to sue him had majority support in Dutch parliament
General John Sheehan
General apologises for blaming massacre on gay soldiers
The Dutch defence ministry has received an apology from the retired US general who claimed that "open homosexuality" in the Dutch army was a contributory factor in the failure to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
According to AFP, John Sheehan wrote a letter addressed to Henk van den Breeman, the Dutch army's chief of staff at the time of the massacre, in which he said he was "sorry" for his remarks during a Senate hearing on March 18, where he argued against plans by the Obama administration to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military.
Bosnian Serb forces overran lightly armed Dutch soldiers in the United Nations-designated enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 and killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.
Sheehan, a former NATO commander and senior Marine officer, had claimed that Van den Breeman and other Dutch leaders had told him the massacre was partly a consequence of the Dutch army's acceptance of "open homosexuality", which "led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war."
The claim was later described as "disgraceful" by Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende and "total nonsense" by the now retired Van den Breemen.
"To be clear, the failure on the ground in Srebrenica was in no way the fault of the individual soldiers," Sheehan wrote yesterday.
"I am sorry that my recent public recollection of those discussions of fifteen years ago inaccurately reflected your thinking on some specific social issues in the military.
"It is also regrettable that I allowed you to be pulled into a public debate."
The Dutch gay rights group Pink Army had threatened to sue Sheehan for slander and defamation unless he retracted and a substantial majority in the Dutch parliament voted to support the action.
But today the organisation said: "Pink Army is relieved and happy that the former American general Sheehan regress his allegations.
"Now that he has expressed regret, the need to start legal proceedings has vanished."
