UK waged 'dirty campaign' to overthrow Sukarno

UK waged 'dirty campaign' to overthrow Sukarno

LONDON (AFP): The world's press was manipulated by British intelligence as part of a plot to overthrow Indonesia's president Sukarno in the 1960s, The Independent on Sunday newspaper reported here.

The weekly said it had obtained a Foreign Office document which revealed the full extent of a "dirty tricks" campaign orchestrated from London.

A letter, marked "secret", from a British propaganda expert to the ambassador in Jakarta, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, boasted of the press campaign to destabilize Sukarno by suggesting his rule would lead to a Communist takeover, the report said.

Sukarno stepped down as Indonesian president in 1966.

"The disorder fostered by the British led to General Soeharto's takeover and dictatorship, and a wave of violence unseen since the Second World War," the weekly said.

Cabinet papers relating to the time were uncovered by David Easter, a historian at the London School of Economics, whose research is to be published this week in the journal Intelligence and National Security.