The new United States ambassador to the Netherlands refused on Wednesday to answer questions about his 2015 statement that politicians and cars had been burned by Muslims in the Netherlands, a claim he has not substantiated.

“Do you now reach the conclusion that you were wrong when you stated that politicians and cars were being burned?” a reporter asked the ambassador, Peter Hoekstra, in his first news conference with Dutch journalists. “Was that a wrong remark, was it false?”

“I issued a statement, I expressed my regrets and my apology for the comments that I made,” the ambassador replied. “And I am not revisiting the issue.”

The ambassador, a former Republican congressman from Michigan who was appointed to the position in The Hague by President Trump, had referred in 2015 to “no-go zones,” erroneously suggesting there were Muslim-ruled enclaves in the Netherlands that are outside the government’s control.