Rutte to Abbott: we share one sorrow

The Netherlands and Australia feel the same sorrow with regards to the MH17 tragedy,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte told his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott yesterday. “Even though our countries are thousands of kilometers apart, we are joined in mourning.”

Abbott, whose country suffered the most victims from the July 17 Malaysian Airlines plane crash after the Netherlands, arrived in the Netherlands on Monday. In a press statement that for a large part went along the same lined as the statement he issued after Malays I an Premier Najib Razak visited, Rutte said the cooperation between the Netherlands and Australia fits in the long tradition of tight bilateral relations between the two countries. They had approached the MH17 disaster together and would continue to do so.

He said it had been a joint decision to not continue the repatriation mission in its initial form. “We would have both liked to see it different, but we agreed that staying there longer would not be responsible,” said Rutte.

He stressed though that he and Abbott also shared the conviction that while the investigations in Ukraine may have stopped now, that was not definite. “We share the ambition to return to the crash site as soon as there are indications that we can do our work there under safe circumstances. We also continue to investigate the true cause (of the MH17 crash); the hiatus in the repatriation mission does not change that.”

He expressed gratitude to the Australian team members of the repatriation mission and those that have joined Dutch and Malaysian experts in Hilversum for the grim task of identifying the victims of the plane crash.

298 people died when the Malaysian Air Boeing 777 was shot down over Donetsk in East Ukraine. Australia lost 38 citizens in the crash; the Netherlands mourns 195 citizens.