New York Agreement - Negotiations

Negotiations

During the 1950s, the United States had poor relations with Indonesia, because of its secret support of antigovernment rebels in Sumatra and its unwillingness to support the Indonesian claim to West New Guinea. Indonesia was also displeased with the "virtually unanimous hostility of the American press" in its international campaign for West New Guinea. At the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the United States Ambassador to Indonesia, supported by the White House National Security Council, proposed a seven-point plan "to prevent Indonesia from falling under communist control and to win it over to the west", which included promising Indonesia reunion with West New Guinea. The Government's Bureau of European Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency and US Secretary of State Dean Rusk opposed the plan, both because of hostility towards the Indonesian President Sukarno, who had collaborated with the Japanese, and support for the Netherlands, a NATO ally.

Both supporters of Indonesia and supporters of the Netherlands in the administration cast their positions as favorable to anticolonialism. The Dutch position argued that the native Papuan people were racially different from Indonesia, that incorporation into Indonesia would be "substitution of brown colonialism for white colonialism", and that the "backward" Papuans were not ready for independence; while the Indonesian position argued that Indonesia was already ethnically diverse, that Indonesia wanted to reunite territories separated by colonialism, and that Dutch arguments about democracy were "a trick" to create "at the doorstep of Indonesia a puppet state... under Dutch tutelage". Although the idea of Papuan independence appealed to senior advisers in the US Government, few thought it realistic. US officials were also concerned about world opinion in favor of Indonesia; diplomatic displays of Third World solidarity were increasing, and in January 1962, Egypt closed its Suez Canal to Dutch ships as a protest against the Netherlands' New Guinea policy. In mid-January, President Kennedy traveled to Jakarta and announced that the United States, "as a former colony, is committed to anti-colonialism".

He later met with both the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Luns and Sukarno, with both agreeing to a United Nations Trusteeship but disagreeing on the details. When the United States sponsored a "compromise" resolution in the United Nations which Indonesia opposed, relations with Indonesia soured. In December, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy decisively advised Kennedy towards a more pro-Indonesian position, lest the "Soviet bloc... draw Indonesia even closer to it". American-mediated secret Ambassadorial level talks began in March 1962, without preconditions, but Sukarno was skeptical of American intentions. An outline of the plan by American diplomat Ellsworth Bunker in 1962 proposed that the Netherlands transfer control over New Guinea to neutral United Nations administrators, who would be gradually replaced by Indonesian administrators, and then completely to Indonesia, which would then be required to organize a referendum "to give the Papuans freedom" with the United Nations secretary general and other United Nations personnel. The Netherlands responded that the proposal was a "shocking betrayal by the United States", originally wanting the referendum to take place under UN administration, although after the United States threatened to make the negotiations public, it acceeded with the addition of a "right to self-determination" into the agreement. Foreign minister Subandrio, who regarded UN supervision and organization of the referendum as a "humiliation for Indonesia", only agreed to a set of pared-down guidelines for the plebiscite when the United States threatened to "switch sides and support the Dutch". The final version of the agreement provided the following parameters for the "act of free choice":

1. Musyawarah (consultative councils) would be instructed on procedures to assess the will of the population
2. The actual date of the act would be completed before 1969
3. The question in the act would allow the inhabitants to decide whether to stay or to separate from Indonesia
4. All adults would be allowed to participate in the act of free choice

On 15 August 1962, representatives from Indonesia and the Netherlands signed the "Agreement between the Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands Concerning West New Guinea (West Irian)" at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.