Mauritius ‘in no rush’ to secure Chagos deal with UK | Nation says £9bn deal for use of air base on Diego Garcia is ‘not enough’ and terms are ‘restrictive’

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1. Mauritius has rejected the latest UK deal proposal:

   > Mauritius is in “no rush” to secure a Chagos Islands deal with the UK and is still pushing for more money, officials have told The Telegraph.

   > The Indian Ocean country has reportedly been offered £9 billion over 99 years by the UK for the continued use of a major US-UK airbase on Diego Garcia, but the Mauritian government is demanding significantly more.

   > A Mauritius official close to the Chagos issue said the lease money offered by the UK was “insufficient” and the wording of the Oct 3 agreement on sovereignty was “excessively restrictive”.

   > “We want to iron out the differences on sovereignty, lease terms and finances before signing the deal. There is no rush from our side and until our terms are met, there will be no deal,” they told The Telegraph.

   > Navin Ramgoolam, the prime minister, and his government are seeking to renegotiate three key aspects of the Oct 3 agreement.

   > They say that the 99-year lease of the Diego Garcia is too long, the clause that allows the UK “to exercise the sovereignty of Mauritius” is perceived as too restrictive, and they want “fair and equitable compensation” for the continued use of Diego Garcia.

2. Mauritius needs to realize that the states isn’t going to give them back Diego Garcia, ever. Any deal from the UK is better than what they’d get from us.

3. Remember when everybody laughed at Donald Trump who insisted he’d get Mexico to pay for the border wall. The UK is doing something waaaay more crazy: paying a random country to take away some of its own sovereign territory. This surely has to be the peak of the UK’s cultural self-loathing; our top civil servants in the Foreign Office are _desperately_ trying to pass the worst diplomatic deal in human history, absolutely nuts.

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