Labour member of parliament Martijn van Dam on Thursday asked defence minister Maxime Verhagen, a Christian democrat, to officially call on Washington to remove its nuclear weapons from Dutch soil.

Labour and the Christian democrats are coalition partners in the Dutch government, but Verhagen told parliament that he is not keen on following up on Van Dam's request. Verhagen said he opposes unilateral nuclear disarmament as long as international disarmament talks between the big powers are still ongoing.

'Counterproductive'

Unilateral disarmament would be "counterproductive", Verhagen said, because there is less of an incentive for the other party to do the same. "As far as I'm concerned the aim is not a nuclear arms-free Europe, but a nuclear arms-free world," Verhagen said.

Any nuclear weapons in the Netherlands would have been part of Nato's Cold War strategy to deter a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union on Western European countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union all the former Soviet block countries handed the nuclear weapons on their soil over to Russia. A bilateral treaty on arms control between Russia and the US expires in December, and the Obama administration is currently working hard on securing a successor to the treaty.

Although it is a public secret that there are US nuclear weapons on Dutch soil, more specifically at the air force base in Volkel in the southern province of Brabant, it has never been officially admitted. "No comment" is the typical answer from officials when they are asked about the nuclear arsenal at Volkel, but there is plenty of indirect proof of their presence.

Belgian slip of the tongue

Van Dam, speaking on Dutch radio, referred to a statement by Belgian defence minister Pieter De Crem, who revealed the presence of US nuclear weapons at Kleine Brogel, a Belgian military air base, during a January 2008 visit there. De Crem, who was new on the job, was reprimanded by the Belgian prime minister. He later said he had misspoken.

An indication that they may also be in Volkel is the - officially admitted - presence of 140 US soldiers of the 703rd (formerly 752nd) Munitions Support Squadron (MUNSS), a unit charged with "the protection of level 1 [weapons] stockpile", which includes nuclear weapons. A leaked 1996 MUNSS report criticised security precautions at Volkel air base.

The weapons at Volkel are in all likelihood B-61 so-called "free fall" bombs from 1963, meant to be dropped from fighter planes.

Obama speech

The exact number of nuclear weapons at Volkel can only be guessed at. The air base has 11 bunkers, which could hold as many so-called Weapon Storage and Security Systems or WS3's. According to military analysts a WS3 can hold up to four nuclear bombs, but given the relative calm international security situation it is unlikely that there would be 44 nucelar bombs at Volkel. Estimates vary from ten to twenty nuclear weapons.

Labour's Van Dam said the Netherlands should use the momentum of US president Barack Obama's April 25, 2009 speech, in which he called for a nuclear arms-free world, to get the Americans to remove the weapons at Volkel. The Socialist party and the Green party GroenLinks agree with Labour, but the Christian democrats and the right-wing liberal party VVD oppose unilateral disarmament.