The Dutch government has launched a damage-limitation campaign to try to counter what it fears is the disastrous international impact of the Islam-bashing populist Geert Wilders.

Wilders, whose success in June’s general election catapulted him into the role of kingmaker in attempts to form a new coalition government, is to travel to New York to take part in protests on 11 September against the proposed Muslim community centre near Ground Zero.

Maxime Verhagen, the acting foreign minister and Christian Democrats’ leader, has voiced fears that Wilders’s speech in New York will tarnish Dutch reputations. He has also taken the unusual step of circulating confidential orders to Dutch diplomats around the world on how to answer questions about Wilders’s influence in a new government and on the fallout for Muslims in the Netherlands.

With characteristic robustness, Wilders has told Verhagen to mind his own business. He clearly intends to grab attention with a tub-thumping exercise in Islamophobia in New York. “Good feeling. Important speech. No one will stop me. No mosque at Ground Zero,” he tweeted after booking a flight to New York. “Stop Islam, defend freedom” is his rallying cry.

The tensions over 9/11 and New York come as Wilders savours his growing clout at home. His Freedom party is running at 31% in the most recent opinion poll, ahead of all other contenders, and he has spent most of this week at a secret location with Verhagen and Mark Rutte, the liberals’ leader, haggling over the terms for a new coalition government.

Wilders, whose party almost tripled its seats, from nine to 24, in the June election, is not joining the new cabinet. Instead, he will prop up a rightwing coalition of liberals and Christian Democrats in return for pledges of a tough new crackdown on immigration and other policy concessions. If the talks succeed, Wilders will be in the enviable position of wielding power while abjuring responsibility.

Guardian, 21 August 2010

Anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders emerged Saturday as a possible member of the next Dutch government after the centrist Christian Democrats agreed to informal talks with Wilders and the free market party that won recent Dutch elections. “I am very happy … I hope we can sit at the table as soon as possible,” Wilders told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “It is positive news.”

Associated Press, 24 July 2010

An anti-Islam lawmaker in the Netherlands is forming an international alliance to spread his message across the West in a bid to ban immigration from Islamic countries, among other goals.

Geert Wilders told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday he will launch the movement late this year, initially in five countries: the U.S., Canada, Britain, France and Germany. “The message, ‘stop Islam, defend freedom,’ is a message that’s not only important for the Netherlands but for the whole free Western world,” Wilders said at the Dutch parliament.

Among the group’s aims will be outlawing immigration from Islamic countries to the West and a ban on Islamic Sharia law. Starting as a grass-roots movement, he hopes it eventually will produce its own lawmakers or influence other legislators.

“The fight for freedom and (against) Islamization as I see it is a worldwide phenomenon and problem to be solved,” he said.

Wilders declined to name any of the other founders of the organization he is calling the Geert Wilders International Freedom Alliance. He said he would hold speeches in the five countries where the alliance will first launch in coming months to drum up support.

Associated Press, 15 July 2010

See also “Dutch politician says UK should be part of a ‘freedom alliance’ of countries pitted against Islam”, Daily Mail, 15 July 2010