THE HAGUE, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Halbe Zijlstra admitted in an interview with Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant published on Monday that he lied about a meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2006.
"It was not wise to do it," Zijlstra says to de Volkskrant, adding "I should have done it differently."
Zijlstra has earlier claimed that he was present at a meeting with the Russian president in Putin's country house in 2006, where the president talked about a "Great Russia".
According to Zijlstra, he was tucked away in the back of the room when he heard Putin's answer to the question of what he meant with "Great Russia" as "that is Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic States, and Kazakhstan was nice to have as well."
The Dutch foreign minister now admitted that he wasn't there, and claimed that he made the fake claim in order to protect his source. "The implications are heavy, so I pulled the story to myself, to make sure that the person who was there himself did not become the revealing factor, because it could also imply implications for him or his company."
Despite the admission of lying about his presence, Zijlstra insists that Putin did actually make the controversial statements.
According to Zijlstra, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has been aware of the fake story for several weeks.
"I informed Mark Rutte a few weeks ago about Putin's statements and the way in which I wanted to protect the source of this information," says Zijlstra.
For Rutte, the lie is not a reason for Zijlstra to step down as foreign minister. "It was not wise to act like this," said Rutte, who just returned from visiting the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, on Monday. "However, the content is not fake news. To protect his source he chose an unwise way to share his information. He should have acted differently."
Zijlstra's admission comes at a bad time as he is scheduled to fly to Russia on Tuesday to meet his Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov for the first time as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The topic of the crashed flight MH17, which cost the lives of 298 people, of which 196 from the Netherlands, is on their agenda.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is convinced of having obtained irrefutable evidence that the flight was shot down by a Russian BUK missile. But it was rejected by Russia, who called the JIT report "biased and politically motivated".
