Cablegram 154 WELLINGTON, 29 July 1947, 6.35 p.m.
MOST IMMEDIATE TOP SECRET PERSONAL
Indonesia.
I now assume in the absence of any information to the contrary that the United States attitude continues to be unfavourable to the United Kingdom proposal for Anglo-American mediation. We find this both disappointing and disconcerting as we had felt that joint efforts at mediation offered the best and perhaps the only possible means of securing cease fire settlement.
If, however, there is to be no such move we for our part feel bound to reconsider our position. I fully appreciate and share your special anxieties and agree that continued inaction may well have most damaging consequences to our interests. I should like to add that I had not been aware until I read your telegram 195 [1] that the Indonesian authorities had appealed directly to Australia in this matter.
Under circumstances of this continuing and worsening situation I would agree that Australia has no other course but to bring the matter before the Security Council as being a situation which might lead to international friction. We have not, of course, and cannot as yet come to any final conclusion as to the merits of the case, although it appears to me that the Dutch are responsible by their resorting to force; nor have we come to any conclusion as to the exact nature of the competence of the United Nations in a matter which the Dutch will claim to be one of essentially domestic jurisdiction. The result of reference to the Security Council should be to enable all members of the United Nations to come to a considered judgement on these points.
The fact that the Security Council should undertake an examination of the situation in Indonesia for which a prima facie case exists need not preclude at the same time such attempts at mediation as may seem practicable now or at a later stage.
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1 Dispatched on 26 July, it conveyed the text of Document 166.
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[AA:A1838/274, 854/10/4, i]