Cablegram 167 NEW DELHI, 1 March 1949, 10.30 p.m.
CONFIDENTIAL
INDONESIA
Your telegram No. 99. [1]
I am in agreement with most of it, but it does not seem sufficiently explicit and definite to afford definite guidance on information before me. The position seems to me to be as follows:-
1. The Dutch have clearly failed to carry out the Security Council’s decision. [2] This is in accordance with your paragraph 4 and the Commission will no doubt report this with appropriate comment. Your own comment is that there has been ‘an inexcusable delay’.
2. Then comes your paragraph 7 indicating the necessity of reconstituting the Government of the Republic of Indonesia as a condition precedent to its representative at the Conference having any authority whatever. This point seems sound and unanswerable.
3. If and when Conference between the parties is held it should be completely within the framework of the United Nations and under the jurisdiction of the Commission of the Security Council, not of the Dutch.
4. Cochran himself does not act for the Commission. I feel that Cochran’s visit to The Hague was ill-timed and has tended to cause what you call ‘inexcusable delay’.
5. If a conference is to be held, its framework, organisation and control are more important than its location. There are solid disadvantages to Batavia, but these apply also to The Hague. The obvious place for the conference seems to be either Lake Success or Geneva, preferably the former.
6. I agree with you that, while what I have said above should be the view taken, some care will have to be exercised by the Australian Representative in New York. We must stand for solid acceptance of the United Nations’ decisions not only by its members but by its own organs. Moreover, weakness and vacillation at this stage may be dangerous to the United Nations authority and prestige.
7. Meanwhile I know some of the Leaders of the Republic have not even as yet been released. There is much to indicate a deliberate policy by the Dutch of playing for time.
8. I sincerely hope that Critchley’s assessment of the situation will be accepted.
9. Prime Minister Nehru and Bajpai both take the view indicated herein which stands for United Nations’ decisions and is not animated by hostility to the Dutch.
10. Bajpai told me today that the Dutch Ambassador [3] had represented to him that Security Council intervention should be avoided because of the possibility of a Russian veto. This is rather absurd, but if the Dutch are putting this up to countries like India, then it is a warning to the Security Council and the United Nations.
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1 Document 257 and note 1 thereto.
2 Document 168.
3 A. Th. Lamping.
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[AA : A9420/1, 4]