The UK’s planned handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius should be considered by incoming US President Donald Trump before it goes ahead, Downing Street has said.
Efforts were made to get the treaty signed before President-elect Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the BBC understands, and it had been expected the Mauritian cabinet would approve the proposal on Wednesday.
The UK plans to hand over sovereignty of the cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean, but to maintain a 99-year lease over the joint UK and US military airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said it was “perfectly reasonable for the US administration to consider the detail” of any agreement.
The deal has drawn criticism from politicians in the UK as well as the incoming US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said it poses a “serious threat” to US security.
Reports had suggested Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam would sign off the deal on Wednesday as he attended a cabinet meeting, but it was later announced his attorney general was travelling to London to continue talks.
The UK took control of the Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean Territory, from its then colony, Mauritius, in 1965 and went on to evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the Diego Garcia base.
Mauritius, which won independence from the UK in 1968, has maintained that the islands are its own, and the UN’s highest court has ruled, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “unlawful”.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir defended his plan, insisting it was the best way to safeguard the military base.
However, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister was “negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation”.
Badenoch said there was “no way we should be giving up British territory in Chagos” and claimed Sir Keir was “rushing a deal which will be disastrous”.
