The Philippines and Sabah in the 1970s — 2

We saw last week that when, in March 1973, President Ferdinand Marcos told US Ambassador Henry Byroade that he was thinking of placing the issue of the arming of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) by Malaysia before the Mutual Defense Board (created by the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the USA), Byroade recommended to Washington that the possibility of Marcos invoking the MDT be headed off by a series of actions by other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) members.

Essentially, that is what happened, with Indonesia playing the major role. For the next few years, the agreement sought involved Marcos dropping the Philippine claim to Sabah in return for Malaysia ensuring that the flow of arms and ammunition from Sabah to the MNLF was stopped.

Just days after the Marcos-Byroade meeting, Indonesian foreign minister Adam Malik was assuring the US Embassy in Jakarta that he was trying to calm the Malaysians, and that Philippine Foreign Secretary Carlos P. Romulo had agreed with him (Malik) and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdul Razak Hussein (father of the current leader Najib Razak) that he would attempt to persuade Marcos to drop the Sabah claim; if this was successful Malik would mount an “all-out effort” to help defuse the Mindanao situation.

Malik was not particularly optimistic, however, feeling that the Kuala Lumpur government had little leverage over Sabah Chief Minister Tun Mustapha (who, with numerous friends and relations in Sulu, was thought to be behind the arms shipments). Meanwhile, Indonesian director-general for political affairs Didi Djajadiningrat asked the Embassy whether the US could also be of assistance, whereupon Ambassador  Francis Galbraith told him that Washington wanted to leave Asean relations to its members — a position that was maintained thereafter.

On March 13, after a palace luncheon, Marcos asked Byroade for a discussion on Mindanao, during which Byroade noted that in recent diplomatic discussions the Philippine claim on Sabah was always mentioned. Marcos told him of the meeting Romulo had held with Razak in Kuala Lumpur a month earlier, where Razak had promised that if the claim was dropped he would travel to Manila to discuss how he might help to defuse the Mindanao situation. Marcos, however, told Byroade that it would have to be the other way round: if Malaysia restored the situation in the Sulu archipelago “to what it was prior to the outbreak of this new crisis,” he would go to Kuala Lumpur “and hold talks on the broader picture, including Sabah…”

 “I gained the impression,” Byroade reported, “that Sabah was not all that important to Marcos’ future scheme of things, but it was not likely that he could agree to drop the claim under existing circumstances.”
In Jakarta, Ambassador Galbraith suggested that the best hope for securing Malaysian cooperation in reducing foreign support for the MNLF “might be some kind of prearranged meeting between Marcos and Razak in which it would have to be agreed that Marcos would give his personal, oral assurance that he would work to further downplay the Philippine claim to Sabah and authorizing Razak to inform Tun Mustapha that in return for hands off Mindanao and Malaysian influence to discourage Mindanao rebels, Marcos would continue to neglect Ph claim to Sabah with objective finally dropping it when it could be done without showing weakness.”

In Kuala Lumpur, Tan Sri Zaiton Ibrahim Ahmad, secretary general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called in US Ambassador Jack Lydman to advise him that only a deal on Sabah could persuade his government to call off Tun Mustapha. Zaiton said that Malaysia did not expect Marcos to “publicly bow his head in defeat on the Sabah issue.” At the same time, he warned that there was no guarantee that any action by Malaysia would resolve the situation in the Southern Philippines, which was deep-rooted, although “there was at least a fair chance” that it could be helpful.

Zaiton told Lydman that Prime Minister Razak had advised Romulo in February that Malaysia was not encouraging the MNLF, although Tun Mustapha probably was, and that Razak was “unable to control these activities.” This was contradicted a few days later when Senate speaker Ong Yoke Lin told the Embassy that Razak would welcome an abandonment of the Philippine claim to Sabah so that he could then “clamp down on Mustapha…”
So was Mustapha controllable or not? The failure of Razak to act against him lends credence to the claim made by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew during a private conversation in Washington that the Malaysia-Philippine problems were “mostly Malaysia’s fault,” although even he acknowledged that a deal on Sabah would not resolve the problem of the Southern Philippines as it was “basically internal.”

Indonesia, about to act as intermediary, had its own reasons for adopting this role. Foreign Minister Malik told an Embassy official at a Jakarta social gathering that he had warned Tun Mustapha that if he brought about a situation in Sulu that could be exploited by Philippine Maoists, “he should realize what Indonesia would have to do” — a veiled warning, said the official, “of Indonesia’s determination to crush all forms of communism in or near its borders.” For his part, Mustapha told Malik that he was not involved in promoting conflict but that, having been born in Sulu, he often received requests for assistance from friends and relatives.

By April 30, 1973, Malik was sounding more optimistic than previously, telling the US charge d’affaires that it was likely that “something will be worked out.” The issue had received a thorough airing at the Asean meeting in Pattaya, where it was suggested that Indonesia act as intermediary, and Malik had therefore arranged a confidential meeting between Philippine and Malaysian envoys for May 7 and was confident of success.

But Malik was, as we will see next week, to be disappointed.

source:  Tribune by  Ken Fuller  (Feedback to: outsiders.view@yahoo.com)