ON SEPTEMBER I3, i969, at the conclusion of a three day conference at Tjiawi, West Java, attended by the principal military commanders on Java, a statement was issued which pledged continuing operations to wipe out the remnants of the banned Indonesian Communist party (Partai Komunis Indonesia-PKI). The statement added that as long as an international Communist movement existed, Indonesia would continue to face a Communist threat.' The statement came at a time of increasing reports-denied by Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik-that the underground PKI had established secret contacts with members of the Algerian, Iraqi, Syrian, and South Yemeni embassy staffs in Djakarta. Meanwhile, the purge was continuing of personnel in the Army and other military services suspected of involvement with the PKI and/or the abortive coup of September 30, i965 (usually called Gestapu by acronym-minded Indonesians, from Gerakan Tigah Puluh September or 30 September Movement). Earlier in i969 there had been many official warnings on the threat posed by allegedly continuing PKI activity. On March 4, for example, and again on March ii, President Suharto in messages to military commanders dedared that Indonesian Communists were attempting to subvert his government and were trying a political comeback. Suharto particularly called attention to the guerrilla insurgency along the Indonesian Sarawak border and to the recent discovery of an extensive PKI underground resistance network in Central and East Java as evidence of the persistent Communist danger. On March I3, a special government investigating committee composed of Army officers formed in order to assess present PKI activity said that the Communists were busily attempting to bring the deposed President Sukarno back to power and were forming a national united front with armed peasants to that end. The committee declared that six strategic Communist cadre units had been formed to sabotage government institutions and de. dared that of the 300,000 party cadres only I2,000 had thus far been captured.2 Nor was Java the only scene of alleged PKI burrowing. In the