INDONESIA

I attended the Council's meeting on Friday anticipating the
Indonesian question would be on the agenda but it was not
considered and no individual member of the Council raised it. I
spoke to the President and several members of the Council and
indicated the gravity of the situation which in the light of our
information was likely to result in an explosion at any moment.

However I learned subsequently that President Langenhove supported
by his Prime Minister Spaak who was in Paris flatly refused to
entertain any idea of placing the question on the agenda although
he had received a request from the Indonesian Federal Government
here. I also learned today that the State Department had given
strict instructions to their representative here to ask Belgium to
join with them in placing it on the agenda. Belgium refused and
the United States representative had no liberty of action to raise
the question unilaterally.

It was the representative of the United States who first gave me
information yesterday morning about the renewal of hostilities and
said he had received instructions from his Government to ask if
the Australian Government would be prepared to associate itself
with the request to the President of the Security Council for the
immediate calling of a meeting on Monday. He also indicated that
the United States would be prepared to take a strong stand in the
circumstances. In the light of our own policy I took the
responsibility of saying that we did desire to be associated. Soon
afterwards I had a conversation with Mr. McIntyre who confirmed
the desirability of working in close concert with the United
States representatives.

During the day I also got in touch with the Indonesian and United
Kingdom representatives. The latter had no information or
instructions but I have now learned that their attitude will not
be known until the arrival of Cadogan tomorrow. Mr. Bevin was
discussing the question with his Prime Minister late last night
and I also understand Mr. Beasley is meeting Mr. McNeil this
afternoon so I assume you will receive earlier information from
London than I can give you as to the attitude and policy of the
United Kingdom.

This morning's provisional agenda was not adopted because it seems
that at the end of Friday's meeting the Soviet representative
asked that at least three days' notice be given to members of any
meeting of the Council before the end of this month and no
objection was then raised to this. In the meantime Malik and
Manouilsky had both gone to Moscow and Molotov personally sent a
telegram to the President of the Council referring to what he
called an agreement of the Council and asking that the meeting be
postponed until Wednesday. The United States, Chinese Minist[ers]
asked for immediate consideration pending further urgent reply to
be sent to Moscow indicating that any such understanding by the
Council did not apply, and could not apply under the charter to a
grave emergency such as the present question. The President,
however, was not disposed to send any such telegram. After the
afternoon's aimless discussion it was decided that the President
should send a telegram to the Good Offices Committee with the view
to obtaining all information possible prior to the next meeting of
the Council which was fixed for Wednesday morning, thus tacitly
accepting the understanding of the Soviet representative. Jessup
pointed out that Australian and Belgian members of the Committee
were in Kaliurang and the United States representative was in
Batavia and that Military Authorities had prevented any
communication between them. Therefore, the President should ask
the N.E.I. authorities to facilitate their reunion to enable a
complete report to be sent.

This morning Jessup indicated to me the lines he was prepared to
follow, and this afternoon, I obtained a copy of their draft
resolution, which reads. Begins:-

'The Security Council noting with concern the resumption of
hostilities by armed forces of the Netherlands against the
Republic of Indonesia and having taken note of reports of the
Committee of Good Offices, considers such resumption of
hostilities to be in conflict with the resolution adopted by the
Security Council at the 171st meeting on August 1st, 1947, calls
upon the parties,
(a) to cease hostilities forthwith and
(b) immediately to withdraw their armed forces to their respective
sides of demilitarized zones established under truce agreement of
17th January, 1948. Instructs the Committee of Good Offices to
report to the Security Council fully and urgently by telegram on
events which have transpired in Indonesia since 12th December,
1948, assessing the responsibility for the outbreak of
hostilities.' [1]

You will note that this is very strong and direct but I think it a
big advance that the United States is prepared to initiate such a
resolution. It is only the first draft, however, and has not yet
been cleared with the State Department. We have asked to be
associated with it but there may be some technical difficulty
about this which we are now examining. They will probably get the
Chinese and either the Argentine or Colombian representatives to
join with them. There should be a good chance of this going
through with the support of the Chinese, Syrian, Soviet Union,
Ukraine, Argentine, and Colombian representatives. With such a
positive vote it is hardly likely that France or the United
Kingdom would veto especially as the United Kingdom has been kept
closely informed of the concern of the United States and
deterioration of the position in the Netherlands East Indies and
of action taken by the United States on December 9th.

As you may be unaware of this action I shall briefly summarise it.

On that date the Acting Secretary of State and American Ambassador
at The Hague presented simultaneously aide memoire [2] in which
the consequences of a breakdown in negotiations were emphasised
and which said that Hatta constituted the best hope of reaching
reasonable agreement. He had performed an excellent task in
suppressing recent Communist outbreak and any further weakening of
Hatta's own position would only result in the extremists taking
the credit, to the detriment of the whole economic position not
only of the N.E.I. but of the Netherlands itself. This would
gravely affect United States policy and programme for E.R.P. and
might well endanger E.R.P. assistance to the Netherlands.

I was informed that this was the strongest warning presented in
recent times by the United States to a friendly power.

The Netherlands reply [3] next day was quite uncompromising and
equally direct. It pointed out that the facts of United States
were incorrect and that assumptions which flowed from them were
unfounded. The note then reiterated the well known Dutch case with
accusations of violations of the Renville and other agreements.

Concluded by stating that if these deductions [sic] continued, and
if the Indonesian Republic did not give a clear undertaking to
accept the conditions imposed by the Netherlands Government, the
Netherlands Government could not be held responsible for the
consequences which might ensue.

The wording of the final paragraph was such that on that day,
December 10th, it was very clear that the Dutch proposed to take
the action which has now, in fact, occurred. The State Department
also interpreted the note accordingly. Copies of these notes will
be sent to you tomorrow by air mail.

I am keeping in touch with, and have had conversations with, most
of the other delegations but, at this stage, they are rather non-
committal in the absence of instructions from their Governments.

So far as I can ascertain it is only the United States and
Australian representatives who have concise instructions.

In my conversations with the Americans, I have indicated points
made in your telegram P 273. [4] They are largely in agreement
with them though at this stage I did not mention points (6) or (7)
to them feeling that they were rather premature and points which
might be kept in mind for the present. We would suggest another
point under (3) namely that as the four chief executives captured
in the capital Djocjakarta in present operations are only
political leaders they, and other political and governmental
captives must be released.