| Ben Bot | |
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In office December 3, 2003 – February 22, 2007 |
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| Prime Minister | Jan Peter Balkenende |
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| Preceded by | Jaap de Hoop Scheffer |
| Succeeded by | Maxime Verhagen |
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| Born | November 21, 1937 Batavia, Dutch East Indies |
| Birth name | Bernard Rudolf Bot |
| Political party | CDA |
| Alma mater | Leiden
University Harvard University |
| Occupation | Diplomat |
Bernard Rudolf "Ben" Bot (born 21 November 1937) was a Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2003 and 2007. He succeeded Hans van den Broek as president of the international relations institute Clingendael.
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Bot was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). He studied law at and obtained his PhD. from Leiden University in Leiden, attended the Hague Academy of International Law and went to Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the USA.
He served in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1963 to 2002, including postings at the Permanent Representation of The Netherlands to the European Community from 1964 to 1970, the Netherlands embassy in Buenos Aires to 1973, and at the embassy in former East-Berlin in the DDR. In the period 1976-1982 he worked in The Netherlands for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, after which he was Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Brussels.
From 1986-1989, Bot was Ambassador of the Netherlands to Turkey. He served as Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague until 1992, when he was appointed as Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the European Union in Brussels. He held that post for an unusually long period of 10 years.
On 3 December 2003, Bot succeeded current NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the second Balkenende cabinet. Bot is a member of the Christen Democratisch Appèl (CDA) party. He was succeeded as foreign minister by Maxime Verhagen in the fourth Balkenende cabinet. Currently, Bot is a partner of the Praaning Meines Consultancy Group and holds various public posts including President of the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy and Chairman of the Board of the Clingendael Institute in The Hague.
In 2007, Ben Bot was quoted as stating that Muslims lack a tolerance "gene". In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Correio Braziliense: "We always have been a tolerant country, and we still are. You have to look at the facts: 10 percent of our population comes from Muslim countries. They have gone on to become Dutch citizens, but they have different "genes" from ours. They are less tolerant". The Dutch foreign ministry later stressed he was misinterpreted, and that he was only referring to the intolerance of the small minority of extremists within the Muslim community in the Netherlands.[1]
Bot was interviewed by the NRC Handelsblad newspaper in December 2007, where he reiterated his 2005 position that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and that he had to "redress" his comment in 2005 after heavy pressure from prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende. In response, Balkenende said that he would have asked Bot to step down if he did not revise his position at the time.[2][3]
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