INDONESIA: Shooting War

Five days after President Sukarno returned to his riven country, the war of words between his government and the rebel colonels of Sumatra became a shooting war. Two 6-25 bombers of the little Indonesian air force swept in over the forested Sumatran coastline, dropped a cluster of bombs astride a bridge over the Salida river and strafed the area before turning back to their base. Sukarno, who hates trouble almost as much as he loves power, had decided to fight.

Sukarno sent Indonesia's only destroyer to prowl the blue-green waters of the Indian Ocean off the seaport of Padang, bottling up cargo vessels in the harbor. In the Strait of Malacca, corvettes and radar-equipped patrol boats intercepted two freighters carrying Sumatran rubber for barter in Singapore. An amphibian plane made a practice landing on Singkarak Lake close by the rebel capital of Bukittinggi—the very place where the Dutch landed airborne troops during the Indonesian fighting of 1948.

Defiantly, a rebel spokesman warned that if the Djakarta government planned a similar attack, "the people will murder them!" To meet the threats of force and economic strangulation, rebel agents offered $200.000 for a fleet of three French sloops and two landing craft anchored at Singapore. Some 20,000 Sumatrans clamored to be mobilized against the central government.

"Plain Citizen." Pivot man for both Sukarno and the rebels was shy, stubborn Mohammed Hatta, who more than a year ago resigned as Vice President because of his disapproval of the growing Communist influence in Sukarno's "guided democracy." Both sides wanted him, but Hatta has refused to be had except on his own terms. Sukarno made a determined attempt to lure Hatta to his side. Stepping into a black Cadillac flying the gold presidential flag, he set off from Merdeka Palace surrounded by jeeploads of soldiers and motorcycle outriders, and raced with screaming sirens through Djakarta's streets, lined with steel-helmeted troops, to Hatta's modest Dutch-style house on Diponegoro Street. Hatta met him on the porch, flanked by his small daughters, Gemala and Halida.

Later, the two men faced each other in leather chairs across Hatta's desk. Sukarno took off his black velvet pitji, ran a hand over his receding hairline and said: "Well, Bung Hatta, tell me now, what am I to do?"

"But, Bung Karno," protested Hatta, "I am only a plain citizen. You must tell me how I can help."

Then they got down to business. Hatta offered to re-enter the government only if he got a free hand. He demanded, without interference from the President, the right to purge the government of Communists and fellow travelers. Sukarno made clear that he did not want Hatta's services but only his name at the bottom of a proclamation calling on the rebels to surrender. Hatta refused. "The rebels had gone too far," he said, but any statement of condemnation from him "would only sharpen the situation."