In recent years a sizeable literature has emerged concerning the Indian Ocean, owing in particular to the growth of perceived superpower rivalry and the resulting proposal by some littoral and regional states, notably Sri Lanka and India that the Indian Ocean should be declared a zone of peace. The strategic importance of the ocean has been dramatized by the build-up of the U. S. base in Diego Garcia. Every port and island has become of potential strategic importance as well. In the early 1970s, concern was expressed in the West over reports of Soviet bases at Berbera and Socotra in Somalia and the possible use of Gan in the Maldives after British withdrawal. As a highlight to this wider canvas, the Cocos-Keeling Islands emerged briefly in 1972 both as an internal Australian political issue which embarrassed the then ruling Liberal-Country party government and as a potentially embarrassing international issue at a time when Australia was preparing Papua-New Guinea for independence. However, the Cocos-Keeling Islands quickly slipped back into the obscurity from which they had briefly emerged, both during the period of Gough Whitlam's Labour government and later when the Liberal-Country party came back to power.