One moonlit night last week, three blips flashed on the radar screen of a Dutch Neptune patrol bomber some 60 miles southwest of New Guinea. They turned out to be three Indonesian torpedo boats racing at flank speed (40 knots) toward the Dutch New Guinea coast. Just over two hours later, after alerting two 2,000-ton Dutch frigates in the area, the Neptune dropped flares over the torpedo boats and was greeted with a salvo of antiaircraft fire.The Dutch ships’ radar-locked 5-in. guns replied, sinking one of the Indonesian craft and forcing the others to flee. After giving chase, the Dutch ships rescued 52 survivors; about 30 Indonesians drowned, including Commodore Sudarso, deputy naval chief of staff.
Thus, after years of negotiation and threats, Indonesia’s campaign to take over Netherlands New Guinea flared up in head-on fighting. The Netherlands government protested that Indonesia had been caught in “an unashamed attempt at open invasion.”
Arguing that his ships were only on routine patrol and in any case outside Dutch territorial waters, Indonesia’s President Sukarno summoned a special meeting of his West Irian (Indonesian for New Guinea, meaning “hot country”) Operations Staff and, as usual in times of crisis, arrested 16 prominent critics of his regime. The army announced that 3,000,000 Indonesians had registered as volunteers for the invasion of New Guinea; one grim-faced army officer warned: “The Dutch have chosen to use force, and Indonesia will respond in kind.”
In identically worded notes to Djakarta and The Hague, U.N. Acting Secretary-General U Thant urged both governments to refrain from “precipitate action” and resume negotiations aimed at seeking a peaceful solution. Netherlands Prime Minister Jan de Quay accepted U Thant’s proposal, reported that his military commanders had orders to act with the “utmost restraint.” At week’s end, Indonesia’s Sukarno agreed to negotiate a settlement “in conformity with the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter.” Nonetheless, though he has four Russian destroyers and 75 fighters and bombers, and took delivery last week of four new Soviet submarines, for a total of six, Western observers agreed that Sukarno is still badly short of the air and naval transport needed for a major invasion of Netherlands New Guinea.
Sukarno’s strategy meanwhile has been to land small bands of “infiltrators” in New Guinea to “show the red and white flag” of Indonesia and stir anti-Dutch feeling among its tribesmen—many of whom have never heard of Indonesia. More sophisticated New Guinea natives are mostly hostile to Sukarno’s “liberation” plans. Last week in Manokwari, where the Dutch first established an ad ministrative post 64 years ago, 3,000 dark-skinned Papuans staged an anti-Indonesian protest march—with encouragement from the Dutch. Waving their own red-and-blue national flag, they paraded to the strains of an old Dutch anthem. Its name: We Want to Keep Holland.
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