The UK’s government on Wednesday confirmed that it would not finalize a deal to hand over sovereignty of the contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius until US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration is consulted.
The governments of the UK and Mauritius have been negotiating in recent months to complete an agreement to settle the future of the disputed Indian Ocean archipelago, which is home to a strategically important UK-US naval and bomber base.
However, the agreement was opposed Trump and his supporters. Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned last year that the deal posed “a serious threat” to US national security.
Photo: AP
The military base, on Diego Garcia, the largest of the chain of tropical islands off the tip of India, has supported US military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the US acknowledged it also had been used for clandestine rendition flights of terror suspects.
The official spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it was “obviously now right” for Trump’s administration to consider any deal.
“It is perfectly reasonable for the new US administration to actually consider the detail and we will obviously have those discussions with them,” he said. “We will only agree to a deal that is in the UK’s best interests and protects our national security.”
Media reports this week had said that officials from the UK and Mauritius were hurrying to complete the deal before Trump entered the White House.
The UK split the islands away from Mauritius, a former British colony, in 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence, and called the Chagos archipelago the British Indian Ocean Territory.
In the 1960s and 1970s the UK evicted up to 2,000 people from the islands so the US military could build the Diego Garcia base.
Mauritius has long contested the UK’s claim to the archipelago, and in recent years the UN and its top court have urged the UK to return the Chagos to Mauritius.
The UK agreed to do so in a draft deal in October last year, but that has been delayed by a change of government in Mauritius and reported quarrels over how much the UK should pay for the lease of the Diego Garcia airbase.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS