Blair condemns Dutch killing

Pim Fortuyn was "not another Le Pen or Haider"

Democracy has been one of the victims of the assassination of Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, says UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The prime minister has called off a visit to Rotterdam on Tuesday in the wake of the shooting.

Mr Blair was to have held talks with the acting Prime Minister, Wim Kok, and to have joined an election rally organised by the Dutch Labour Party.

The assassination is so completely out of character with what we believe the Netherlands are about

Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has spoken to his Dutch counterpart about the killing, branded the assassination as "shocking".

The shooting is the first assassination of a Dutch politician in the Netherlands since the seventeenth century.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said the prime minister recognised that the Netherlands was "a country in shock".

Democracy first

The prime minister disagreed with many aspects of Mr Fortuyn's policies but believed differences should be settled through debate and the democratic process, said the spokesman.

"You do not advance democracy by committing murder," he continued.

The democratic process has been one of the victims of this assassination."

Earlier, Mr Straw told how Dutch Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen had stressed to him that Mr Fortuyn was not the same as far-right leaders like Jean-Marie Le Pen in France or Jorg Haider in Austria.

That was despite Mr Fortuyn's views towards Muslims, to which Mr Straw said he thoroughly objected.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Straw described Mr Fortuyn as a "far more balanced person than anyone who was supporting Le Pen".

But he acknowledged the Dutch politician had held views on immigration similar to Mr Le Pen's.

'Full citizens'

"What it tells us is that there is a gulf of misunderstanding between Islam and the western communities into which there are very large movements of population," said Mr Straw.

The foreign secretary argued the UK had enjoyed more success than some other countries in Europe in respecting the differences with Islamic communities, as well as embracing them as full citizens.

In France and Germany, however, there had been problems where such immigrants were treated as "not quite full members of the community" and so retained their "complete separateness".

The UK had also been careful to give state funding to non-Christian faith schools, said Mr Straw.