Canberra, 3 June 1969
Confidential
I would like to expand a bit on our telephone talk about possible four-cornered, low-key middle-ranking-official discussions in Canberra with the Indonesians on border matters.1
The object of these talks would be to bring together Canberra/Djakarta/Djajapura and Port Moresby in order to work out some sort of ‘agreement’, such as ‘Agreed Outline of Border Procedures’ which would among other things provide for continuing liaison and the main object of which would be to ensure either by explicit understanding incorporated in the agreed minute or exchange of letters or by some agreed procedure for future use to keep the temperature down both in the Territory and in West Irian on the one hand and in Canberra and Djakarta on the other—to minimise if not completely avoid the possibility of armed clashes arising through cross-border raids (some perhaps retaliatory by West lrianese).
We should of course wish to work out with your people and Defence details of proposals that might be put to the Indonesians. Some possibilities, however, are—
(a) periodic discussions Canberra/Djakarta with representatives from both West Irian and T.P.N.G.;
(b) measures to ensure ‘control’ to check border crossings; and to flush out any large groups of West Irianese;
(c) establishment of a number of ‘information points.’ at or near the border along those parts where crossings are prevalent or likely;
(d) measures to ensure non-violence (careful instructions, frequent meeting at ‘information points’);
(e) subject to acceptance by Indonesians, patrols of P.I.R. (perhaps mixed with police, perhaps with Indonesian observer officers) to be kept, say, five miles from border except at ‘information points’.
It might even be that we could come around to regulating the procedure for repatriation of border crossers by something like an extradition agreement although it would need to be a pretty streamlined version.
For this reason we would like to see brought into the picture the possibility of arrangements under which the P.I.R. could be used for patrolling the border areas in such a way that this would not be regarded as provocative by the Indonesians, or in which they would cooperate. There might be exchanges of information with Indonesians about the movements of our units and of theirs and perhaps some kind of joint patrol system (on our side of the border) as suggested above.
It is becoming Increasingly clear that present arrangements in the border area are not adequate to deal with anticipated developments. There are now some 200 police in the area and this has only been made possible by an undesirable reduction of police strength elsewhere. The force of police available for border duties is in any case too small to patrol the border adequately and there is little that can be done to improve on this in the short term, with Bougainville likely to continue tense. We have proposals to increase the strength of the constabulary but it could never adequately patrol the full 490 miles, much of which is impassable. It would need an excessively large police force to do that job, I would think. So we think some means has to be found of bringing the P.I.R. into the picture.
It appears that border incidents will continue for several months and recent events have shown that we lack control on our side of the border: and we don’t think this can be remedied by calling on the police alone.
We would be looking for an Australian delegation to include External Affairs, Territories and Defence, and Port Moresby, with the Indonesians supplying representatives from West Irian as well as Djakarta. I do not feel discussions like these in a wider context should affect the immediate proposal for a visit by a Territory officer to Djajapura2— indeed, they would grow out of the Djajapura (Webb and Watson) exercise.
[NAA: A452, 1969/2608]
1 Following this discussion, Plimsoll had sent a message to Jockel suggesting that such a meeting might be held in mid-June (minute, Besley to Galvin, 31 May 1969, NAA: A452, 1969/2608).
2 See Document 266.