UK puts Chagos handover deal in 'deep freeze' after Trump criticism

LONDON: Britain indicated Saturday it would shelve plans to hand back the Chagos Islands, which hosts a strategic US-UK military base, after US President Donald Trump strongly criticized the deal.

A former top government official said the government had been effectively forced to abandon the plan due to Trump’s opposition.

“When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the government 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.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Downing Street office 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.

Trump in January lashed out at what he called London’s “great stupidity” over the deal.

Last May’s Chagos agreement would have seen Britain hand the islands — some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Mauritius — to its former colony and pay to lease Diego Garcia, the largest island, which is home to the military base, for a century.

‘Deeply frustrating’

The UK had still not received a formal exchange of notes from Washington –- a technical step but a legal necessity for the treaty to be enacted, the PA news agency reported.

Time had consequently run out to pass the legislation before parliament was dissolved in the coming weeks, it said, quoting a government source as saying the situation was “deeply frustrating”.

Main opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the agreement should now find its “rightful place – on the ash heap of history”.

“That it took so long is another damning indictment of a Prime Minister who fought to hand over British sovereign territory and pay £35 billion to use a crucial military base which was already ours,” she said.

Downing Street said the government would continue to “engage with the US and Mauritius”.

“Diego 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 — it is the entire reason for the deal,” the Downing Street spokesperson added.

Trump had endorsed the deal after it was signed but then launched a scathing attack on it in Truth Social comments in January.

“The United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia… for no reason whatsover,” he said.

“There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness,” he said, adding that it showed why the US needed to conquer Greenland from ally Denmark.

Diego Garcia was one of two bases that the UK allowed the US to use for what the British government insisted were “defensive operations” in its war against Iran.

99-year lease

Starmer has previously insisted that international legal rulings have put Britain’s ownership of the Chagos in doubt and only a deal with Mauritius would guarantee that the base remains functional.

Britain kept control of the Chagos Islands after Mauritius gained independence in the 1960s.

It evicted thousands of Chagos islanders who have since mounted a series of legal claims for compensation in British courts.

In 2019, the International Court of Justice recommended that Britain hand the archipelago to Mauritius.

The deal would have given Britain a 99-year lease of the base, with the option to extend.

The UK government has not said how much the lease would cost but has not denied reports it would be £90 million ($111 million) a year.