Britain indicated Saturday it is shelving plans to return the Chagos Islands — which hosts the strategic Diego Garcia US-UK military base — to Mauritius, after US President Trump strongly criticised the deal. Britain struck a deal with Mauritius last year to hand back the Indian Ocean islands to its former colony and pay to lease Diego Garcia, the largest island, home to the military base, for a century. Trump condemned the return agreement as “an act of great stupidity” and on Saturday British media reported that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s govt would drop legislation needed to put the deal into effect. Downing Street said in a statement: “We have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has US support.” Starmer’s office issued the statement in response to reports that legislation underpinning the deal to return the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius was due to run out of time in parliament and that no new Chagos bill would be brought forward. A former top official said London had been effectively forced to abandon the plan as a result of Trump’s opposition. “When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the govt has to rethink, so this agreement… will go into the deep freeze for the time being,” Simon McDonald, previously the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, told BBC radio.
