Security Council

On December 12, 1948, the Committee of Good Offices submitted a special report on the direct talks between the representatives of the governments of the Netherlands and the Republic of Indonesia which, together with its appendices, made available previously confidential documentation that had been the subject of Security Council discussion. Of special interest were the so-called Crichtley-DuBois Memorandum of June 10, 1948, and the Cochran Memorandum of November 10, 1948. In the former, the Australian and United States' representatives had submitted to both parties a working paper for the resolution of differences containing the following suggestions: 1) that the extent of the Republic's representation in the Provisional Federal Government be determined on the basis that Republican territory would include all those portions of Java, Sumatra and Madura in which, through a plebiscite, the population expressed a desire to be incorporated into the Republic; 2) that it would be possible to create a fairly representative Provisional Federal Government through machinery which would consist of a Joint Commission of Technical Experts to delineate boundaries of states; a Constituent Assembly elected upon the basis of one delegate for each 500,000 inhabitants and given power to accept the report of the Technical Commission making changes in proposed state boundaries only by majorities of both the Assembly and the delegates from the areas affected by changes; and a Provisional Parliament. The memorandum proposed that the powers of the Lieutenant Governor-General be limited, in the provisional period, to a veto over acts of the Provisional Federal Government which were contrary to the Charter of the United Nations or to the Union Statute and to the direction, after consultation with the provisional authorities, of the employment of federal armed forces in cases of civil conflicts which the provisional authorities were unable to control.