A Lowy Institute blog just ask "It was to be expected that Vanuatu would use its position as chair to promote its support for West Papua but you have to wonder why it keeps trying."

I would appreciate hearing any reasoned feedback to my below response :

PNG has a large voice in the MSG and PNG fears Indonesia as much as it enjoys its share of mining revenues. But this does not mean good sense should not be promoted, not only is West New Guinea a nation of Melanesian cultures and peoples but it better shows the corporate issues affecting PNG and the rest of Melanesia. Good governance can not exist without acknowledging these corporate connections.

For your reader's benefit I remind you West Papua was in affect traded in a 1962 sales contract known as the New York Agreement, which the US Dept. of State records released in 1995 admit was design for benefit of the US to protect itself from the Cold War. According to these records against both CIA and DoS advice the US National Security Council from April 1961 began pushing Kennedy to force the Netherlands to trade this colony to Indonesia.

McGeorge Bundy as US National Security Adviser had been appointed on advice of alleged Cold War architect Robert Lovett; who was a director of Freeport Sulphur which had been trying to establish a claim to West Papua's gold & copper since August 1959. When West Papua held national elections and Australia and others attended the April 1961 inauguration of the New Guinea Council, Bundy had the NSC intrude into DoS affairs by advising Kennedy to trade the Melanesians to Indonesian control; as the Dutch rose West Papua's flag next to their Tri-colour on 1st December, in Washington Bundy personally told Kennedy :
"Sukarno is not your own favorite statesman", "no one in this town does not believe that, sooner or late, that Indonesia will get West Irian."

Not only were Bundy and his father old family friends and fellow Bonesmen of Robert Lovett, but Bundy five years later would become President of the Ford Foundation which since 1949 had been promoting the creation of the Republic of Indonesia instead of the United Nations concept of a federation. The Foundation believed a strong Javanese power would provide American corporations with easy access to the wealth of Asia, and as it turns out the Australian continental island of New Guinea.

You may have no respect for Noam Chomsky and myself but we have spent years looking at the microcosm to understand the larger picture. If you stand back from the above detail and contra claims of Sukarno being a hero and Suharto being something else, the truth is that the Javanese voluntary Axis forces were allowed to stay in power after the war and twenty years later when their leader Sukarno still stood in the road of the promised easy access to the wealth of Asia which Soedjatmoko and Sumitro had promised to the Ford Foundation and corporate America in 1949; Sukarno was replaced by Suharto who in 1967 readily provided Freeport its mining license of West Papua's gold and copper, and provided a comfortable environment for Exxon in Sumatra to Conoco Philips in Timor, servicing all these corporations was Bechtel Inc.

When you talk about Jarkarta, you are talking about a gaggle of
corporations, Generals, and the need to maintain the fantasy that the Republic represents freedom from Dutch colonisation. East Timor did not get its vote because of Australia, it got its vote because Norway gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Belo and Horta; the Republic had lost control of the media coverage and the media would soon see through the fog of names and call Timor, West Papua and other islands colonies.

There is no harm to Conoco Philips or Bechtel which people are running the local government so long as the government agrees to do business with their corporations. The Republic repression of Aceh, Borneo, Papua is not in America's or Australia's interest; it is only in the self interest of Jakarta.

Vanuatu continues to promote support for West Papua because it is in Melanesian and regional interest to do so.

## end of response to Lowy Institute ##

Interesting background information in your posts, Daeron. Can you provide a web link to the Lowy Institute item?

I would also suggest that you submit an article to Online Opinion on "Our Melanesian Interest". The editors are willing to publish thoughtful and well researched pieces. They are also helpful (as opposed to intrusive) with editing.

It is a shame that international diplomacy and subterfuge doesn't get the same popular exposure as, say, the sex lives of the glitterati. We amateur journalists, some of us, can address this crying need, in our humble way.

The Lowy article "Diplomacy: Melanesian style" is available at
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2008/05/Diplomacy-Melanesian-style.aspx

Also my copy of the US Dept. of State summary is available at
http://wpik.org/Src/950306_FRUS_XXIII_1961-63.html#Indonesia

I will mention these summaries are poorly written and they mean White House staffers Robert Johnson and Robert Komer were on the National Security Council staff. As for their boss McGeorge Bundy, his father Harvey Bundy (another Bonesman) had been a colleague of Robert Lovett in the US war department overlooking special and air projects.

I had not thought of this before, but that also means the Bundys and Lovett must have had a working relationship with Bechtel Inc. since the 1940s; which is interesting because Freeport used Bechtel as the engineer to design and build the Freeport mines in West Papua. The inside information about West Papua's gold & copper came from the Rockefellers who were also on Freeport's board. The reason the Rockefellers let fellow Freeport directors in on the deal in 1959 was because the New York Times in March had published an article revealing the Papuan mines office was searching for which mountain a large amount of alluvial gold was coming from. Especially because the Dutch in 1961 ask the newly elected New Guinea Council to write legislation putting West Papua's resources into Papuan control, the Freeport group had to act fast.

Now, doesn't that make Michael Rockefeller's 1961 death in West Papua, downriver from the mine area, sound more interesting ?
What wicked webs they weave when first they practice to deceive.