Canberra, 20 September 1965
Secret
Indonesian Approaches to Lee Kuan Yew
Reference telegram 866 dated 17th September from Singapore, reporting Pritchett’s conversation with Lee Kuan Yew, in the course of which Lee said that Indonesia had made seven approaches to Singapore since Singapore’s separation from Malaysia.2
2. Lee told Pritchett that he had said he would not receive any {Indonesian} representatives in Singapore but that the Indonesians could send someone to New York to talk there to Abubakar,3 the Permanent Head of the Singapore Foreign Affairs Ministry, who is going overseas with the Foreign Affairs Minister Rajaratnam.
3. Lee mentioned an approach which the Indonesians made to him last year. This approach was made in September. Just before the end of the Security Council’s discussion of the Malaysian complaint of Indonesian aggression in September,4 the Indonesians sent a series of secret messages to the Tunku suggesting bilateral talks. After three or four such approaches had been made, Suwito,5 first Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, made an approach to Lee suggesting a meeting in Hong Kong to discuss arrangements for reopening talks. Lee told the Tunku about this approach, and the Tunku said that Lee himself should not go, but that he might offer to send a personal representative. We did not know whom Lee had picked as a personal representative, though at the time Pritchett said that the British Deputy High Commissioner in Singapore6 thought that it would be the Minister for Labour, Jek Yuen Thong. In the event, no meeting was held with the Indonesians.7
4. It is only to be expected that the Indonesians would be sounding out Lee at the moment. I think we should do anything we can to remind Lee of the importance of letting Kuala Lumpur know that these approaches have been made and what he has done about them. It is only a matter of time before somebody in Kuala Lumpur hears that this sort of thing is going on and, if the Malaysian Government thinks that Lee is talking to the Indonesians behind their back, it will only add to the present friction.
[NAA: A1838, 3006/4/9 part 30]
1 Lewis Border, Assistant Secretary, South East Asia Branch, DEA.
2 The focus of this conversation had been what Pritchett described as Lee’s ‘expanded and trenchant critique’ of the ‘Alliance Government’s hostility to Singapore, its fear of political progress and sundry similar subjects’, given by Lee in a television interview in Hokkien on 14 September. Lee maintained that he had been reacting to continued adverse comment about Singapore in the Malay press and that he had been targeting Tan Siew Sin who he believed threatened to ruin the prospects of cooperation between Singapore and Malaysia. Lee also made a passing reference to his resistance to all approaches to resume direct trade with Indonesia but said some trade could go forward possibly at the Indonesian island Pulau Sambu. (Subsequent reports corrected the island in question to Pulau Senang, an island under Singaporean control 16 km from Singapore and approximately 5 km from Indonesia.)
3 Abu Bakar bin Pawanchee, Haji.
4 See Documents 202–205 and 207–209.
5 Suwito Kusumowidagdo.
6 Philip Moore.
7 The Indonesian approaches made to Tunku Abdul Rahman during this same period (see footnote 2, Document 216) likewise failed to result in a meeting.