INDIAN OCEAN Work to begin on U.S.-U.K. base

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32567, 29 March 1971, Page 11

INDIAN OCEAN Work to begin on U.S.-U.K. base

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright}

WASHINGTON,, March 28.

United States Navy construction engineers are about to lay the foundations of an austere communications base on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, where the Russian Navy is exerting growing influence.

The outpost lies on the Diego Garcia atoll, 1000 miles south-west of the southern tip of India, in the Chagos Archipelago (Oil Islands), and it will be manned jointly by British and American officers and men when it is completed in about three years.

Since 1968, the Soviet Union has been sending increasingly large numbers of ships into the Indian Ocean which has been described by Dr Alvin Cottrell, of Georgetown University’s centre for strategic and international studies as “the last great vacuum area of the world.” Russian naval forces in the Indian Ocean at any given time now total up to 20 surface ships and submarines. In contrast, the United States has only two old destroyers and a converted seaplane tender there.

“The facility will close a gap in America’s naval communications system,” a United States Navy spokesman said. “It will provide communications support to American and British ships and aircraft in the ' Indian Ocean.”

Officials describe the base as "an austere communications facility” and say that it will include “minimum necessary support activities, including an airstrip.” It is being built on a practically uninhabited island 14 miles long and four to five miles wide, which has a lagoon described as an excellent anchorage. The original United StatesBritish agreements to build

the base were .made in 1964, under a treaty making the islands of the British Indian Ocean territory available to the United States and United Kingdom Governments for defence activities for 50 years. Funds to build the base, however, were not granted by Congress until this year. Hie United States Navy announced plans for the base in December, and the engineering team left for the island two weeks ago. ■