TALKS BEGUN IN INDONESIA

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25329, 31 October 1947, Page 7

TALKS BEGUN IN INDONESIA

ARRIVAL OF THREENATION COMMITTEE NEW MOVE BY POLAND AT U.N. (Rec. 7 p.m.) BATAVIA, October 29. The Security Council’s three-nation committee arrived at Jogjakarta today and began preliminary discussions with the Indonesian Republican Government for a settlement of the Indonesian dispute. Similar talks will be held with the Dutch in Batavia tomorrow. Reliable Republican sources said that the Republican Government would ask the committee to hold substantive discussions in Jogjakarta, but if that were impossible, to hold the talks outside Indonesia, either in Singapore, Manila, or Australia. There has been no abatement of military activity in Java and Sumatra once the arrival of the committee. Poland has introduced in the United Nations Security Council a resolution asking the Council to call on the Netherlands to withdraw all its armed forces from Indonesian territory and directing the Netherlands Government’s attention to the fact that failure to comply with the provisional measures for settling the dispute might lead to the necessity of applying enforcement measures under the United Nations Charter (meaning economic ■auctions including blockade). Australia unexpectedly reversed her position and supported the Russian proposal calling for the withdrawal of all troops in Indonesia to the lines held before the hostilities. Colonel W. R. Hodgson said that in view of the Consular Commission’s report, which placed on the Dutch a large measure of responsibility for the continued fighting, Australia now believed that the only practical method of ending hostilities was for the Security Council to insist that the troops be withdrawn to their original lines. Previously Australia had .proposed that both sides withdraw five kilometres behind the positions held at the time of the first cease fire order. The Council adjourned the Indonesian debate until Friday.