UK forced to halt Chagos Island transfer

The UK has been forced to pause its plan to hand over the Chagos Islands, on which the US air base in Diego Garcia resides, after US President Donald Trump repeatedly criticised the deal, reports CNN. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his government are not completely scrapping the plan to hand the islands to Mauritius. However, it is understood that there is not enough time left in the current parliamentary session to enshrine the deal into British law. The UK Government has long said the deal could not proceed without US support and it is understood there hasn’t yet been an exchange of notes with Washington, a normal procedure before which any treaty could be enacted. When the deal to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which claims sovereignty over the Indian Ocean territory, was first announced it was fully supported by the US. Under the proposed deal, the UK and the US would still have access to the base on Diego Garcia – the largest of the Chagos islands – since the UK would pay Mauritius $136m a year for a 99-year lease. But Trump later backtracked on that support, attacking the deal as an ‘act of great stupidity’ amid a general fraying of US-European diplomatic ties. He then claimed that the base could be used in any operations against Iran. Starmer ultimately blocked Trump’s request to allow US forces to use UK air bases, including on Diego Garcia, for offensive operations against Iran. British control over the islands is a relic of its colonial past. In 1965, an agreement between the US and UK split the Chagos Islands from Mauritius and, though Mauritius gained independence three years later, the Chagos Islands remained under British control.