Canberra, 12 March 1964
AP39. Restricted
Indonesia/Malaysia
In discussions with colleagues and the Government to which you are accredited, please take all available opportunities to stress the following points:—
1. Australia remains anxious to explore every avenue of possible agreement between Indonesia and Malaysia.
2. Malaysia is now an international fact of life and an accepted member of the United Nations. No question of recognition or non-recognition by individual states has any relevance to its established international existence.
3. For Indonesia to seek to crush or destroy it is not only a breach of the United Nations Charter but an act of aggression which must earn general disapprobation.
4. The presence of Indonesian trained, controlled and led guerillas on Malaysian territory and their reinforcement under cover of the Kennedy negotiated cease fire, is not a ‘political question’ to be negotiated.
5. Malaysia tried hard at both the Tripartite Foreign Ministers’ meeting to reach an accommodation with Indonesia but clearly this cannot be achieved until the present process of re-inforcing the Indonesian guerillas in Malaysia is reversed and their withdrawal begins.
6. Negotiations for the re-establishment of normal relations between Malaysia and Indonesia can only be between sovereign states recognising and respecting each other’s territorial integrity.
7. Maphilindo cannot prosper when one partner claims the right to invade the territory of another and stimulate a revolution in it.
[NAA: A1838, 3006/4/7 part 23]