Britain indicated on Saturday that it would suspend plans to return the Chagos Islands – which host the strategic US-British military base Diego Garcia – to Mauritius, after US President Trump strongly criticized the agreement. Britain concluded an agreement with Mauritius last year to return the Indian Ocean islands to its former colony and pay for the lease of Diego Garcia, the largest island, which includes the military base, for a century. Trump condemned the return agreement, describing it as an “extremely stupid act,” and British media reported on Saturday that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government would drop the legislation necessary to put the agreement into effect. “We have always said that we will only go ahead with the deal if it has the support of the United States,” Downing Street said in a statement.
Starmer’s office issued the statement in response to reports that legislation supporting the deal to return the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius was set to run out of time in parliament and that no new Chagos bill would be introduced. A former senior official said that London was effectively forced to abandon the plan as a result of Trump’s opposition. Simon MacDonald, who was previously the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, told BBC Radio: “When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the government has to rethink, so this agreement… will go into a deep freeze at the moment.”
