DUTCH AND THE INDONESIANS STILL POLITICALLY APART

Wanganui Chronicle, 25 February 1947, Page 5

DUTCH AND THE INDONESIANS STILL POLITICALLY APART

London, Feb. 2!

The “Times” Singapore correspondent says the latest reports from Batavia say the political deadlock there continues, with the Dutch insisting on, and the Indonesians unanimously refusing to, accept the so-called “Jonkman interpretations” of the Cheribon Agreement, initialled last November. One well-informed source describes the Dutch and Indonesians as being politically farther apart to-day than ever. The events in Indo-China helped to stiffen the Dutch attitude, but there does not seem any fear at present of any outbreak in hostilities such as occurred in Tonking.

Since taking over from the British the Dutch have now enlarged all their Java and Sumatra bridgeheads, chiefly through uninhibited use of airpower, and their army’s prediction that the Indonesians would never stand up to bombing and strafing seems well founded. The cease-fire order recently issued by the Indonesian High Command appears to have been a tacit admission of military inferiority, its purpose being to avoid giving the Dutch any possible excuse for further expansion. The struggle is shifting from the military to the economic sphere, and becoming a long term war of economic attrition. Confident they carl* deny Java's produce to the Dutch, the Indonesians hope that sheer economic necessity will eventually force the Dutch to give way politically.