Plebiscite “will be
p. 63 · Read in the full issue
held in WNG"
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Adam Malik, recently denied foreign Press reports that Indo nesia did not intend to hold a plebiscite in West New Guinea to enable the people to decide their own political future.
Indonesia agreed to hold the plebiscite when it signed an agreement with the Dutch in 1962, witnessed by the United Nations. The plebiscite was to be held before 1969.
The London “Times” and other papers reported early in December that Indonesia’s Minister for Internal Affairs, Lieut.-General Basuki Rachmat, had formally renounced his country’s pledge to hold a plebiscite in a statment to the Indonesian Parliament. He was reported to have said that the people of West New Guinea did not want a plebiscite.
However, a newsletter issued by the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra on December 28 quoted Mr. Malik as saying that the foreign Press had wrongly interpreted Lieut.- General Rachmat’s statement.
Indonesia would abide by its agreement to hold a plebiscite, Mr. Malik added.