Same Old Sukarno

A summit conference used to mean a meeting of the world's top leaders.* Nowadays, just about any get-together between heads of government is billed a summit, whether it joins Tito and Nas ser or Liberia's Tubman and the Upper Volta's Yameogo. Last week still an other less than towering summit brought together in Tokyo Indonesia's President Sukarno, Malaysia's Premier Tunku Abdul Rahman and Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal. Agenda: "the Malaysian problem," which happens to be entirely of Sukarno's making.

Since last summer Sukarno had been waging a "crush Malaysia" guerrilla campaign, branding the new Federation a neocolonialist plot. Three times he promised to call a halt, but in fact kept pushing the bloody little jungle war. When Malaysia's Abdul Rahman refused to talk as long as fighting continued, Sukarno once again promised to withdraw his guerrillas and to have the operation supervised by neutral Thai observers. Finally last week a group of 32 ragged Indonesians marched out of northern Borneo through a Thai-supervised border checkpoint. Shouted the departing Indonesian warriors: "Long live Thailand, long live Malaya, long live Sukarno."

Rahman accepted this withdrawal as a token, even though several hundred more guerrillas remained behind in northern Borneo, and the Tokyo talks got under way--but not for long. Macapagal proposed a four-nation Afro-Asian conciliation commission to mediate the dispute. Fine, said Sukarno playfully. How about Red China as one of the mediating powers? He did not insist on that condition, and Rahman was ready to accept mediation, provided the Indonesian guerrillas were called off. This Sukarno refused. In the end, the three leaders could only agree to turn over Macapagal's proposal to their subordinates. After the summit's failure, Sukarno hastened home, explaining: "We can't keep the wives waiting." In Indonesia the recruiting of guerrillas continued.

* Like many another verbal ducat, the term was coined by Sir Winston Churchill, who in 1953 called for a "summit of nations" to settle East-West differences.

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