Confidentially. . .

To set against its long list of futile endeavors, the United Nations could point to a few modest successes. One was the truce agreement between the Dutch and the Indonesian Republic. Last week that small star in U.N.'s crown was fading fast.

Stalemate. The hitch did not result from lack of initiative on U.N.'s part. Indeed, the Dutch claimed that U.N.'s Good Offices Committee in Indonesia (made up of an American, an Australian and a Belgian) was pushing too hard and too fast. Under the truce agreement reached last January, the Dutch and the Republicans were supposed to work out plans for a federal United States of Indonesia, to take over sovereign powers in 1949.

But the negotiations got nowhere. One obstacle: the Dutch demanded immediate disbanding of the Republican army; the republic insisted that it must keep a defense army until the Dutch have agreed to a plan for local self-rule. The Dutch accused the Javanese Republican leaders of designs on all of Indonesia; Republican leaders accused the Dutch of trying to restore colonial rule.

To break the stalemate, the U.S. and Australian members of the Good Offices Committee whispered a plan of their own, providing for federation by 1949. Republican Premier Mohamed Hatta liked it. But Dutch Acting Governor General Hubertus van Mook refused to consider the plan, told U.S. Committee Member Coert du Bois that he had no business submitting it in the first place. Then the U.S.-Australian plan leaked to the press. The Dutch announced that "in view of the publication of the strictly confidential document*. . . The Netherlands delegation has requested instructions from The Netherlands government." They "discontinued" negotiations "for the time being."

Stalling? Republican leaders suspected that the Dutch were stalling to avoid any kind of settlement. In their "police action" last summer, Dutch troops seized the biggest towns and richest lands of Java, deprived the republic of rule over two-thirds of Java, parts of Sumatra and all of Madura. Meanwhile the Dutch have maintained a naval blockade of the Republican area. Republican leaders suspected a Dutch scheme to whittle down the republic's size and staying power until they could impose their rule throughout Indonesia, through Dutch-controlled governments. One measure of their good faith would be the speed, or slowness, with which the touchy Dutch reopened negotiations.

*A U.S. correspondent in Java had cabled TIME, offering a future story on truce negotiations, outlining the terms of the still confidential U.S.-Australian proposal. TIME did not print the information. By complaining about its "publication" in TIME, the Dutch not only put every other correspondent in Indonesia on the track of the story--they admitted that somebody was snooping into correspondents' outgoing cablegrams, a violation of confidential communications which many a government practices, but which no polite government likes to admit.

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