The Hague blossomed with bronze faces and bright native costumes last week as some 200 Dutch and Indonesian delegates assembled for a round-table conference in The Netherlands' staid capital. With the U.N.'s Commission for Indonesia looking on, the delegates in The Hague's ancient Hall of Knights expected to spend two months at solving the thorny Indonesian problem which has plagued the Dutch and the Western world since war's end.
The Dutch were committed to the project of a "United States of Indonesia," with probable dominion status under the Dutch crown. Last week the Dutch still insisted that every jot & tittle of the proposed agreement must be in place before they transferred sovereignty to the Indonesians ; the impatient islanders wanted sovereignty first, and to tuck in the loose ends later. The most hopeful aspect of the conference was that both sides knew they could not get what they wanted by force.