Malik Expects ‘More Trouble’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31982, 8 May 1969, Page 15

Malik Expects ‘More Trouble’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

DJAKARTA, May 7.

The Indonesian Foreign Minister, Mr Adam Malik, today predicted more trouble in West Irian until the act of free choice, to decide the territory’s future, was completed in August.

“I think those who disagree with the act will exploit the present situation to create further trouble there until the act is completed,” he told reporters. Mr Malik told reporters at a press conference at his home that the trouble in the Central Western Highlands of West Irian, where primitive tribesmen were defying Indonesian rule, was confined to a small number of people. “The situation there is now under control and based on reports I got, the incident was not as serious as reported by the press,” he said. In New York a United Nations spokesman said today that “it is up to the Indonesian Government to determine the form of the act of free choice” by which the people

iof West Irian were to decide whether they were to remain with Indonesia or separate from it.

“The Times” said in an editorial that an uprising in West Irian on a scale that required the use of 500 paratroops almost under the eyes of U Thant’s representative for West Irian affairs was embarrassing for President Suharto’s Government.

The Sydney “Daily Telegraph” said Indonesia's reported rocket attack on “primitive tribesmen” in the remote West Irian town of Enarotali “takes us back to the days when the Italian Air Force bombed helpless Abyssinians.” In a strong editorial attack on Indonesia’s actions in West Irian the morning daily newspaper said: “West Irian's farcical ‘act of free choice’ is approaching against a background of futility, hypocrisy and bloodshed."