191. Memorandum of a Conversation Between the Director of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs (Young) and the Indonesian Ambassador (Notowidigdo), Department of State, Washington, April 5, 19551
SUBJECT
- Remarks of Soviet Ambassador to Washington on Quemoy and Matsu
At lunch today the Indonesian Ambassador told me, on the basis of strict confidence, that he had recently had a long conversation with Ambassador Zaroubin on various matters including the question of whether or not the Chinese Communists would actually attack Quemoy and Matsu. Ambassador Moekarto said that during this conversation he began teasing Zaroubin, as he put it, about the Soviet Union letting the Chinese attack these two little islands and threatening to bring on a general thermo-nuclear warfare as a result. At first Zaroubin ducked the whole issue but then he finally became rather annoyed and suddenly blurted out that this was not true because the Chinese Communists were not going to attack Quemoy and Matsu. Realizing what he had said, Zaroubin abruptly changed the subject of conversation. Moekarto was sure Zaroubin had let this remark slip unintentionally in a moment of provocation.
In any event Moekarto thought this slip was particularly revealing. It conformed to the reports of the Indonesian Ambassador in Peking who has been telling his government in Djakarta that in his opinion the Chinese Communists would not attack the two islands or Formosa.
On the other hand, Moekarto said that this question of whether they would or would not attack was very confusing. Krishna Menon has told Ambassador Barrington2 who told Moekarto that the Chinese [Page 452] Communists had the intention of attacking the two islands. When I asked Moekarto whether or not he could tell from the reports of the Indonesian Ambassador in Peking that the Chinese Communists do or do not fully understand the readiness of the United States to help in the defense of Taiwan, Moekarto said that the position of the United States with respect to the two islands is so ambiguous in Washington that neither he nor any of his colleagues with whom he has discussed the matter can evaluate the intentions of the United States and so report accurately to their governments. Moekarto told me quite frankly that he has been sounding out this question with several Asian and European diplomats in Washington all of whom appear completely confused, he said, regarding the United States position on the two islands. He acknowledged that our position on Taiwan is clear but he felt that was not a crucial issue. The question of whether the Chinese Communists will attack the offshore islands and whether the United States will intervene against that attack is the basic problem. He thought it would be better for the United States to announce clearly that it would resist or that it would not. He is afraid that in this “confusion” that the Chinese Communists may become reckless and decide to launch an assault on the offshore islands.