Word: sukarno
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Indonesia's President Sukarno, who sorely lacks troopships, trained soldiers and hard cash for his threatened invasion of Netherlands New Guinea, is banking on jingo power to persuade the world that he means business. Though Sukarno last week slightly softened his repeated demand for immediate sovereignty over Netherlands New Guinea, allowing that "sooner or later" will be good enough, Indonesia's government and armed forces acted as if the country were already at war. Officials set up blood banks, ordered air-raid drills, recruited volunteer troops. Through Djakarta's streets tramped Irian Barat (West New Guinea) Liberation...
Inviting foreign newsmen to visit Macassar, Indonesia's invasion headquarters in the Celebes, Sukarno saw to it that the streets were draped with banners proclaiming in plain English: WE WILL GIVE OUR LIVES FOR IRIAN BARAT. No less clear to Western correspondents was the combat unreadiness of ill-fed, ill-disciplined, ill-conditioned infantrymen who, as one put it, "seemed exhausted after a 30-minute demonstration that would scarcely have tired a Finch College hockey team...
...invariable reply when asked for bread, sugar or cooking oil-"We don't have any." A rice shortage, caused by severe drought last fall, has brought a 300% price increase in the nation's staple food in three months. Gasoline and auto parts are virtually unobtainable, and Sukarno's war scare has caused hoarding and profiteering in many other goods...
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...