501.BC Indonesia/3–1548: Telegram
The Consul General at Batavia (Livengood) to the Secretary of State
210. Gocus No. 180. Hatta came to Batavia in US plane March 11 and had across the table talks with Van Mook until March 13. He sent word asking Dubois to meet him Republican headquarters Batavia 1730 hours March 13 which he did. In private talk Hatta advanced the following:
- 1.
- His talks with Van Mook had been on the whole satisfactory and on several points they had reached agreement in principle.
- 2.
- One related to mutual reduction of armed forces. It envisages a merger of Dutch and Republican armed forces into a USI national army for defense and public order directed by a joint general staff composed of Dutch and Indonesian general officers with a Dutch chief of staff. The Republican contribution to this force would be around 60,000.
This would require demobilization of upward of 200,000 Indonesian troops including irregulars. Hatta’s difficulties are two-fold, inducing the young hothead element in the Laskar Rakjat (Peoples Army) to turn in their bamboo spears and get back to planting their rice sawahs before reducing his disciplined regular forces to a point where the Laskar might take over and the psychological difficulty of getting his people and his officers to believe in the sincerity of the Dutch intentions to reduce their forces.
He wants our help in inducing the Dutch to give him time to work out this problem in his own way. He is afraid the Dutch will get impatient and start pushing deadlines and ultimata at him.
In the absence of instructions to the contrary we propose to help Hatta in three ways: (1) see that there is at least a token Dutch demobilization [Page 118] at once and publicize it for all it is worth and stop Dutch press reports of troop arrivals in NEI; (2) widen the demilitarized zones wherever possible, as much as possible, and as rapidly as possible; (3) if approved by both parties, offer the services of a US military adviser personally to Hatta to strengthen his hand with his own officers.
Other questions touched lightly were:
- 3. Hatta wants Van Mook to announce officially that January 1, 1949 is the target date for creation of USI but was not insistent about it.
- 4. He would agree to Republicans joining any full-fledged legal interim government if and when formed.
- 5. Apparently the creations of foreign representation and currency were taken up and tentative agreements reached and plans made, but he did not appear to want to discuss them and I did not press him.
Department pass The Hague.1
- This was done the same day.↩