The Indian Ocean Zone of Peace

August 11, 2025

Let’s look back after Gareth Evans’ article, at the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace proposal by Sri Lanka in 1964 which was endorsed by the UN. I recently found a 1984 letter to me by then aviation minister, Kim Beazley.

The letter puts the Forces Posture Agreement with US and UK nuclear armed submarines operating from Rockingham in a new light. Beazley said the then federal government was committed to an IOZP. He was involved in lobbying in Washington for continued US participation in the UN Ad-Hoc Committee on Indian Ocean Arms limitation. Warship visits, under the IOZP, he said, should be addressed within multilateral confidence-building measures.

Beazley wanted to avoid a situation where major Australian population centres are targeted, so he moved at the ALP conference to prevent permanent basing of foreign warships in Perth. He said permanent facilities attract weapons, and these would likely include tactical nuclear weapons which an enemy would want to destroy whether such ships were in port or not. We must not, he said, support propositions that warship visits attract nuclear strikes irrespective of the permanence of their presence. Doing so would be anti-Americanism. He had opposed the permanent basing of [foreign] warships since Fraser proposed it.