"I think prisoners should be treated with great care... That's the reason why I have decided to launch an independent enquiry," Defence Minister Henk Kamp told a news conference.
Kamp's announcement followed allegations by the De Volkskrant newspaper that Dutch soldiers had tortured dozens of Iraqi prisoners during interrogations in November 2003, and that their officers covered up the practice.
The paper said Dutch military intelligence agents used "robust questioning tactics" and quoted a defence ministry spokesman as saying: "Things happened that were in violation of instructions."
Kamp confirmed there had been prisoner interrogations but not that there had been abuse.
He acknowledged that in July 2003, intelligence agents made 15 prisoners wear ski goggles that blinded them "so the detainees could not recognise their questioners".
The prisoners were subjected to music and noise "to prevent them from communicating with each other" and had been sprayed with water, the minister said.
The military hierarchy had been alerted to the investigators' methods, he said, and the royal police force had carried out an inquiry. "It concluded that no reprehensible deeds took place," he stressed. He nevertheless wanted a commission of enquiry to re-examine the facts and "judge how all those implicated, including myself, acted with the information at our disposition".
De Volkskrant said the interrogations took place at the US-led coalition's provisional authority buildings in Samawah, southern Iraq, where detainees were blindfolded before being exposed unprotected to intense light, potentially damaging their eyes.
They were also doused with water to keep them awake, exposed to extremely unpleasant sounds and refused permission to speak to a lawyer, the paper said.
It also said Lieutenant Admiral Luuk Kroon, the officer in charge of the suspected torturers, failed to report the incidents to judicial authorities even though he knew about them in early November 2003.
The left-wing opposition in the Netherlands has called for a parliamentary investigation. "The smell of a cover-up is getting stronger and stronger," said Labour Party leader Wouter Bos, the main rival of outgoing Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.
The allegations follow previous reports of prisoner mistreatment by US and British soldiers stationed in Iraq. The Netherlands sent about 1,400 troops to southern Iraq after the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003.
Their mandate ended in early 2005.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006
