The Associated Press

Mon, Sep 29, 2008 (8:45 a.m.)

Former Dutch Defense Minister Relus ter Beek, who abolished the draft and sent troops to an ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, died Monday of lung cancer aged 64, the government announced.

Ter Beek was defense minister from 1989-94 in a centrist coalition led by Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers. Coming to office as the Berlin Wall fell, he worked to streamline the Dutch military in the aftermath of the Cold War, including scrapping the draft.

"The fact that we have a modern, professional military that can quickly be deployed anywhere in the world _ and where there is no place for conscripts _ is partly thanks to the vision of Relus ter Beek," current Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop said.

Ter Beek, a longtime lawmaker with the Labor Party, also sent Dutch troops to the first Gulf War and to take part in the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Srebrenica safe haven in eastern Bosnia.

After Ter Beek left office, the outnumbered and outgunned Dutch peacekeepers stood by as Bosnian Serbs overran the enclave in July 1995 and systematically murdered 8,000 Muslim men in Europe's worst massacre since the Holocaust.

After leaving national politics, Ter Beek returned to the eastern Dutch province of Drenthe, where he was born, and accepted the largely ceremonial position of the queen's representative in the province from 1995 until his death.

Ter Beek was survived by his wife and two children. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.