Cablegram 855 CANBERRA, 6 October 1948, 5.30 p.m.
SECRET
Your 1079. [1]
INDONESIA
State Department may be informed that we shall be glad to do what we can to encourage Hatta to recommence negotiations as soon as possible. We would not, however, regard it as within our province to try to persuade him to accept conditions which are clearly unsatisfactory and acceptance of which would weaken his position.
in this connection, we are not yet convinced that the Netherlands authorities have in fact accepted Cochran proposals as basis for negotiation. From what we learn from Critchley, we gather that latest Netherlands note presented to United States Representative on October 4th submits proposals which bear close resemblance to plan for an interim government prepared at The Hague in consultation with ‘federalists’ from Bandoeng conference. Though full details of this plan are not known to us, we suspect that Republicans would find it unacceptable. If however it is a fact that Netherlands authorities have accepted Cochran proposals as basis for discussion, we do not anticipate that Hatta will raise obstacles against resumption of negotiations.
2. On the question of vehicles and medical supplies for Republicans, main difficulty all along has been not so much that of finding sources of supply as that of obtaining Dutch agreement to transit through Dutch-controlled areas to the Republic. We ourselves have had medical supplies ready to send to the Republic for a considerable time, but have never yet been able to secure definite assurance from the Dutch that these would be allowed to enter the Republic.
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1 Document 263.
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[AA:A1838, 403/3/1/1, xix]