LONDON: Britain will rework its deal to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a minister confirmed on Wednesday (Sep 23), after US President Donald Trump branded the agreement “terrible” during his first meeting with UK leader Andy Burnham.
London’s decision to hand back the Indian Ocean archipelago to its former colony and pay to lease a strategic US-UK military base on Diego Garcia has been a bone of contention with Trump’s administration for months.
The UK confirmed in April that it was pausing the plans agreed last year between the Mauritian government and Britain’s then-prime minister Keir Starmer.
It faced vocal opposition from Trump, who had initially supported the pact, but then later branded it “an act of great stupidity”.
The unpredictable American leader railed against the deal again on Tuesday in his first face-to-face on Tuesday with Burnham, who replaced Starmer in July.
Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Trump said he believed Burnham would be reconsidering the “terrible deal”, as the UK leader sat beside him, nodded and said “yep”.
Burnham later told broadcasters Britain would “work hard” to find a resolution on the thorny issue and that he was “confident we can find it working with our US partners”.
Hours later, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said Trump’s opposition was “not news to us” but that his latest comments “provide absolute clarity that his position on this Chagos deal as currently drafted is not changing”.
“So we have to do more work with our American allies, with President Trump and his administration, to get the deal to a place where we can support it,” he told the BBC on Wednesday.
Streeting confirmed that annual payments worth at least £120 million (US$159 million) to lease back the military base from Mauritius would not be made “at this stage”.
Starmer struck the deal after insisting that international legal rulings have put Britain’s ownership of the Chagos in doubt and only a deal with Mauritius would guarantee continued US and UK use of the base.
“MILLSTONE?”
Britain kept control of the Chagos Islands after Mauritius gained independence in the 1960s.
It evicted thousands of Chagos islanders who have since mounted a series of legal claims for compensation in British courts.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice recommended that Britain hand the archipelago to Mauritius.
The deal would have given Britain a 99-year lease of the base, with the option to extend.
James Cartlidge, defence spokesman for the main opposition Conservative party, said the agreement “should be binned entirely”.
But Streeting told Times Radio: “The ostrich strategy of sticking our heads in the sand and hoping it (will) go away … is not a wise strategy when it concerns one of the most sensitive national security assets we have anywhere in the world.”
Jack Pannell, a senior researcher at the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank, said Burnham’s priorities with Trump would be on “the big international issues” like AI regulation, Ukraine and the Middle East.
“Success for Burnham means avoiding this issue becoming a millstone around his neck while he pursues his other foreign policy priorities and focuses on his domestic agenda,” Pannell told AFP.
“The chances of a breakthrough on this issue are slim, and that may suit the prime minister just fine.”
On Tuesday, Trump signed a security deal with the leaders of Greenland and Denmark that will allow the US to build two military bases in southern and eastern Greenland.
