UN General Assembly
1980

235. In their anxiety to control what they call the "uncontrolled upheavals in the third world", which they regard as threats to their vital interests, and which they are trying to resolve to their advantage, certain great Powers have used these situations to justify stationing or maintaining in the Indian Ocean considerable military forces enabling them, so they say, to confront any eventuality. 236. Do those forces have broader missions in the context of the military confrontation between the two blocs? Great care is taken not to say so, even if the presence of strategic nuclear arms gives us every reason to believe it. A dangerous situation still exists in the Indian Ocean, which prompted the President of my country to address a message on 22 June 1980 to the United Nations Secretary General in which he stated, inter alia: