856e.00/7–2748
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs (Butterworth)
| Participants: | Mr. R. K. Nehru, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim of India |
| Mr. W. Walton Butterworth, Director, FE | |
| Mr. William S. B. Lacy, SEA | |
| Mr. Charles W. Adair, Jr., Acting Assistant Chief, SOA | |
| Mr. Joseph S. Sparks, SOA |
Mr. Nehru called at his request. Ref erring to his Government’s great interest in the political situation throughout Asia and in a peaceful settlement of the Dutch-Indonesian Republic dispute in particular, Mr. Nehru asked the Department’s views on the prospects for success of the negotiations before the GOC. He said that his Government regarded the US-Australian proposals as offering a practical basis for a just and viable settlement of the dispute and considered that the Netherlands should be persuaded to discuss them.
I pointed out that the US-Australian proposals were embodied in a working paper which had been offered both parties on an informal, personal basis; that, therefore, those proposals had no official status, not having been offered by the GOC. I reminded Mr. Nehru that the Netherlands had rejected the proposals on both substantive and procedural grounds, but that it seemed to me that the really compelling reason for the Netherlands’ rejection of the working paper lay in the fact that the Netherlands had been on the eve of an election in which the parties of the right would have made political capital of any new proposals.
Mr. Nehru said that his Government viewed with great concern that policy of the Netherlands Government, the purpose of which seemed to be the fragmentation of Indonesia. He said his Government understood that the Netherlands were preparing to establish a United States of Indonesia without the participation of the Republic. He said that his country’s experience of partition was sufficiently unpleasant to make his Government particularly anxious that partition not take [Page 291] place in Indonesia, with which country India had enjoyed particularly close and cordial relations. I replied that the US Government was aware of no plans which postulated the partition of Indonesia and that my Government shared the view of the Government of India that such partition would be highly undesirable. I referred in this connection to the Renville Agreements, the history of which I recounted briefly, and pointed out that strict compliance by both parties with the letter and the spirit of the Renville Agreements would obviate the possibility of a partition of Indonesia, since the Renville Agreements contemplated the formation of an interim government and of a USI, in both of which the Republic and all other parts of Indonesia would participate as constituent states. I pointed out that both sides had shown on occasion a lamentable inclination to interpret compliance with the Renville Agreements somewhat liberally, and that on such occasions the US Government had been concerned to discourage such lapses from both the letter and spirit of those agreements.
I assured Mr. Nehru that the Department believed that full scale negotiations would be resumed under the auspices of the GOC early in August and that the Department believed these negotiations could result in the achievement of a mutually satisfactory settlement. I reminded Mr. Nehru that as a reflection of the US Government’s continuing interest and confidence in the GOC, it was dispatching one of its most experienced diplomats to Java to replace Mr. Dubois, who had been taken ill, as US Delegate on the GOC.
Mr. Nehru said that he was sure his Government would be reassured by the point of view I had expressed. I told Mr. Nehru that I would be delighted to continue to exchange views with his Government through him on the status of the Indonesian dispute.