INDONESIA

You will be aware that on 22nd June Dutch and Republicans reached
agreement on arrangements for the restoration of the Republican
Government at Djokjakarta and also on conditions for holding of
the proposed round table conference at The Hague. [1] While these
agreements still have to be ratified by the Republic Government
when it re-assembles at Djokjakarta, there is a reasonable
prospect that The Hague conference will begin on about its
scheduled date of 1st August.

When conference meets there will still be a number of vital
problems to resolve, and if a satisfactory settlement is to be
reached a great deal is likely to depend on the skill and patience
of the United Nations Commission. This makes it all the more
important that the Commission should be allowed to exercise its
full influence on the proceedings. We have taken the view that the
Commission should in fact preside, and the Republicans would also
like this. Since, however, the Dutch can claim to have taken the
initiative in calling the conference they will doubtless expect to
preside, and it appears that United States Government concurs in
this, and that the Republicans themselves are unlikely to resist
it to the point of deadlock.

Assuming that the Netherlands is to preside over the conference as
a whole, the next best thing is that the Commission should be in a
position to influence and control the work of the committees and
sub-committees. It appears that the Dutch themselves have
suggested that committee chairmanships should rotate or be
allocated to experienced participants. Since under the conditions
agreed upon at Batavia the conference is to decide its own rules
of procedure, this should create an opportunity for ensuring that
the Commission will preside permanently over the Steering
Committee, which is likely to be the key committee of the
conference.

Please discuss matter with the State Department, which we believe
has been taking the view that the Dutch should assume
responsibility for the success or failure of the conference. You
should emphasize that we regard a settlement in Indonesia as a
United Nations responsibility and that a successful outcome at The
Hague depends on the active participation of the Commission, which
has been largely responsible for the measure of agreement reached
in the last few weeks. We fear that a conference held under the
sole auspices of the Dutch, with the Commission relegated to a
purely advisory position, might result only in an agreement
accepted under pressure by the Republican Delegation but later
repudiated by the Republican people.