A bill laying out plans to return the Indian Ocean archipelago, home to the US-UK Diego Garcia base, has been paused.<\/p>\n
Published On 11 Apr 202611 Apr 2026<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom is setting aside a bill to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius amid a lack of support from United States President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has US support,\u201d a UK government spokesperson said in a statement, according to the Reuters and AFP news agencies on Saturday.<\/p>\n
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This followed reports in the UK media that said a bill laying out plans to cede sovereignty of the 60-plus Indian Ocean islands had been dropped from the next parliamentary agenda.<\/p>\n
Last May, the UK and Mauritius jointly announced a deal that would return full sovereignty of Chagos to Mauritius, which is some 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) away from the archipelago.<\/p>\n
Britain would then pay to lease Diego Garcia<\/a> \u2013 the largest island and a strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean between Asia and Africa, which is home to the military base \u2013 on a 99-year lease to preserve US operations there.<\/p>\n But Trump opposed the move, calling it an \u201cact of great stupidity\u201d in January.<\/p>\n \u201cDiego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US. Ensuring its long-term operational security is and will continue to be our priority \u2013 it is the entire reason for the deal,\u201d the UK government spokesperson added in his statement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are continuing to engage with the US and Mauritius.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement added that the UK \u201ccontinue[s] to believe \u2060the agreement is the best way to protect \u2060the long-term future of the base\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2018Big mistake\u2019<\/p>\n After Trump\u2019s initial opposition,\u00a0he appeared to momentarily back down<\/a> in February after speaking with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying Starmer had made the \u201cbest deal he could make\u201d.<\/p>\n But he then attacked the prime minister again on Truth Social weeks later.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is making a big mistake,\u201d Trump wrote, adding that ceding the Chagos Islands would be \u201ca blight on our Great Ally\u201d.<\/p>\n Over the last six weeks, relations between Trump and Starmer have been further strained by the US-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n The UK is now leading a coalition<\/a> of more than 30 countries to protect vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, without US<\/a> participation in the initial talks.<\/p>\n Britain has controlled the Chagos since 1814, including after Mauritius gained independence in the 1960s. The Diego Garcia base has played a key role in US military operations in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Chagossians \u2013 thousands of whom were forcibly evicted to make way for the base \u2013 have brought compensation claims to British courts, culminating in a 2019 International Court of Justice recommendation that the archipelago be returned to Mauritius.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bill laying out plans to return the Indian Ocean archipelago, home to the US-UK Diego Garcia base,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2582,5506,252,1584,1816,18,14,5,6,461,2126],"class_list":{"0":"post-11631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-border-disputes","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-mauritius","12":"tag-military","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-us-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116385605711506846","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}