Indonesian Settlement At Last ?
The conference between Dutch and Indonesian delegates which opened at The Hague on Monday is expected to go on for at least two months, but all this time will be needed if an enduring settle- ment is to be produced. The ultimate arrangement which is to emerge from the conference has been agreed upon in advance—an independent Indonesian Federation, linked only with Holland by a common allegiance to the Crown. In essentials this arrangement dates back to the Linggadjati Agreement of November, 1946, but the disputes and bloodshed which have marked the intervening three years have amply shown that agreement on principles is not enough ; it is the details which are all-important. The optimism which has marked the preliminaries to The Hague conference was therefore slightly damped by the statement of the Republican leader, Mr. Hatta, that the discussions should be limited to " those con- cerning fundamentals and principles only." But it must surely be as apparent to the Republicans as to everybody else that most of Indonesia's troubles since the end of the war have been due to mutual mistrust which, in its turn, has sprung from misunder- standings and misinterpretations. To avoid future accusations of bad faith it is essential that both the Dutch and Indonesians should know exactly what they are putting their signatures to, and that the machinery for settling disputed points of interpretation should be equally clearly drawn up. This is certainly what the Dutch and the non-Republican Indonesians (Federalists) hope for from the conference. The Republicans, who can only claim sovereignty over comparatively small areas of Java and Sumatra, may cherish the belief that they have won their present tactical leadership in Indonesia by the opportune exploitation of ambiguous agreements, but even they can hardly relish the prospect of further disputes. Indonesia is so near to administrative and economic chaos that, if it declines any further, all concerned, including the Republicans, will be the sufferers.
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