Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XXIII, Southeast Asia

230. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Indonesia⁰

Washington, February 12, 1962, 10:30 p.m.

907. Eyes only Attorney General from Ball. Your 1424.¹ Since your telegram arrived I have had a further frank talk with the Dutch Ambassador who has reconfirmed our impression of the Dutch position at this point.² If the Indonesians are willing to drop their demand for preconditions to talks the Dutch will be willing to discuss any aspect of their differences including transfer of West New Guinea administration to Indonesia. However they do not feel that they are faced with “force majeur”, and they feel they are committed to seeing to it that the people of West New Guinea get a fair deal.³

If the Indonesians would drop pre-conditions and they could sit down together with patience the Ambassador believes they could reach agreement, but the Dutch are not prepared to sit down without a third party present. Ambassador van Roijen believes that only the United States possibly can exert pressure on the Indonesians to negotiate without preconditions and he hopes that we will use our influence to this end.

On the basis of this discussion as well as of many previous soundings both in Washington and the Netherlands I am persuaded that we cannot tell the Indonesians that if they agree to talk with the Dutch on the basis of no preconditions, the outcome will be settlement of the question on their terms. The Dutch are not willing to put us in position to say this even on a private and unofficial basis. The only hope is that the Indonesians can be persuaded to agree to drop their demand for preconditions in which case the possibility of an outcome acceptable to the Indos seems good. I hope you can make this the main thrust of your discussions with Sukarno and Subandrio. The Indonesians should realize that they cannot expect the Dutch to surrender before negotiations have begun.⁴ If talks can get started, we will continue to encourage both sides to come to an agreement.

I regret that this may not give you what you need for useful discussions and I recognize that you will be under great pressure to give more substantial assurances. However, I am convinced that if we can get over the present hurdle and persuade the Indos to sit down quietly and negotiate they can quite likely develop a mutually acceptable solution since I am persuaded that there is a good deal of flexibility in the Dutch negotiating position.

In answer to your second question, if the Indos should agree to discussions without preconditions this would necessarily change the whole picture. It is difficult, however, for us to prejudge the outcome since we could decide what were “meaningful arrangements” only in the light of the discussion as it actually proceeded. The Indo position would certainly be much stronger in our opinion and in the opinion of the world if they actually sat down to negotiate but even so we could not be in position of condoning use of force. It is difficult at this point to see what form our stronger support could take and I think it would be unwise to try to define it in advance with any precision.

In your discussion with GOI officials, believe you will wish bear in mind the following:

1) We have avoided accepting role of mediator in this dispute as we believe our leverage with both parties can best be exercised if we are not directly in the middle. Our recognition that a third party should participate in talks caused us to take the initiative in asking SYGU Thant to undertake the task of mediator. He agreed to do this and has been in contact with representatives of both sides in New York in recent weeks.

2) The substantive positions of both sides are now very close. Both sides suffer from a long history of controversy and bitterness on this question. Price and “face” are major factors in the positions of both sides. We believe that negotiations can be successful if they can be started in a manner that will not be humiliating for either side.

Rusk

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 656.9813/2–1262. Secret; Niact. Drafted by Lindquist and Ball, cleared by Bell and Tyler, and approved by Ball.
1. Document 227.
2. See footnote 3, Document 229.
3. At this point, the following two sentences were crossed out: “This means, according to the Ambassador that while willing to discuss a transfer of Administration they would not be prepared to see such a transfer take place before the population had an opportunity to express their will. However they are prepared to work out arrangements under which the Indos would have access to WNG to put their case before the Papuan people so that the Papuans could make their decision on a fully informed basis.”
4. The following phrase was crossed out at this point: “and they should understand that we cannot ask them to do this.”