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Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31144, 22 August 1966, Page 13

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(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) HONG KONG, August 21. British troops who have held the jungle defence line in Borneo against Indonesian infiltrators for three years, happily packed their gear last week and began a phased withdrawal from Malaysia, writes Seymour Topping chief correspondent in South-east Asia for the “N e w York Times.” Topping says:

The signal for the exit came after Indonesia formally terminated its confrontation of Malaysia by signing a peace accord in Djakarta on August 11. It was the end of the undeclared war which had taken about 700 lives. It also meant the end of an era for British military power in the Far East. The Far East Command, a combined British, Australian and New Zealand force of about 50,000 men garrisoned in Malaysia, will be whittled down drastically. Most British ground, naval and air forces will be transferred, and the burden of defending South-east Asia will fall even more heavily on the United States, although Britain' intends to maintain the big base at Singapore for a while.

Hard pressed financially, the British waited impatiently for the formal end to the confrontation so that they could gracefully fold up most of their military establishment east of Suez.

Indonesia, now under the control of General Suharto, the strongly anti-Communist army leader, no longer threatens to outflank either the British position at Singapore or United States naval and air bases in the Philippines. In spite of some sniping by President Sukarno, who ordered the confrontation in January, 1963, Suharto and Malaysian leaders seem determined to go ahead with prac-

tical measures for cooperation in military and other fields. They have agreed to set up a joint Defence and Security Committee which would deal with Chinese Communist guerrilla operations that are a threat to both countries.

In Sarawak, Malaysian authorities are wrestling with the clandestine Communist organisation, which is estimated to have a hard core of 2000 Chinese guerrillas. They are supported militarily by another 4000 Chinese, including 1000 who were trained in Indonesia during the confrontation. About 20,000 Chinese are said to be sympathisers. In the jungle-covered hills of southern Thailand near the Malayan border, a force of about 600 hard-core Chinese Communist guerrillas have stepped up operations in cooperation with Thailand Patriotic Front, a Pekingbased organisation. Shedding their customary caution, the guerrillas took the offensive on August 7 and wiped out a 15-man patrol of the joint Thai-Malaysian security command.

The guerrillas are headed by Chin Peng, who led the Chinese terrorists in a cam-

palgn against the British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960. Like the Communists in Sarawak, Chin is waiting for deterioration of the general security situation in the region before launching a major insurgency movement.

Joint Thai-Malaysian patrols have found evidence that Chin is training three battalions of villagers as potential insurgents.

The end of the confrontation has encouraged nonCommuniist countries in the southern region of South-east Asia to enter into bilateral security arrangements rather than depend entirely on United States or British protection. Such officials as Mr Malik, Foreign Minister of Indonesia, the Thail Foreign Minister, Mr Khoman, and the Deputy Premier of Malaysia, Tun Abdul Razak, believe that these arrangements and emerging political, economic and cultural associations eventually can coalesce into an indigenous mutual defence organisation. Such an organisation would devote itself to making its members impervious to subversion by Peking or Hanoi, while relying on United States and other forces based outside of the region to deter

any overt Communist invasion.

Looking beyond the war in Vietnam, these officials see such an evolvement as the most practical way of assuring peace in South-east Asia.