The UK is shelving its plan to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to a strategic US-UK military base, to Mauritius. This was stated on Saturday by the spokesman of the British government after strong opposition from the US President Donald Trump, AFP reports, writes TASR. “We have always said that we will continue with the agreement only if it has the support of the USA,” the spokesman informed.
- UK delays handover of Chagos Islands to Mauritius after Trump’s criticism.
- The legislation needed to return the archipelago to Mauritius was not passed by Parliament in time.
- Trump called the plan to return the islands a great folly.
- The planned agreement counted on the lease of the Diego Garcia base for 99 years.
Trump called the handover of the islands “a big stupidity”
Legislation needed to return the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius was not passed by the deadline and a new law is unlikely to be introduced, the BBC reported earlier, citing British government officials.
US President Donald Trump sharply criticized the upcoming agreement in January, calling the handing over of the islands “a big stupidity”. The important American-British military base Diego Garcia is located there.
The original plan
In May last year, Britain agreed to return sovereignty over the islands of Mauritius, while wanting to lease the mentioned military facility. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government supported the deal, but also admitted that it could not proceed with its implementation without Trump’s support, The Times newspaper reported.
The Treaty on the Chagos Islands was supposed to determine that Britain would hand over the archipelago, located approximately 2,000 kilometers northeast of Mauritius, to its former colony, and pay it for the lease of the base for the next century.
Planned lease of the base
Starmer argued that international legal rulings challenged Britain’s claim to the islands and that only an agreement with Mauritius could guarantee the operation of the base. In 2019, the International Court of Justice recommended that London return the archipelago.
The agreement was supposed to provide Britain with a 99-year lease of the base with the option of extension. Although the government did not say how much the lease would cost, it did not deny that it would be around 90 million pounds (about 103 million euros) a year.
Diego Garcia was one of two bases the UK allowed the US to use for “defensive operations” in the war against Iran.
