LONDON (AP) — Britain’s government confirmed Wednesday that it will not finalize a deal to hand over sovereignty of the contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius until President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is consulted.
The governments of Britain 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 U.K.-U.S. naval and bomber base.
But the agreement was opposed by Trump and his supporters. The president-elect’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned last year that the deal posed “a serious threat” to U.S. national security.
The military base, located on Diego Garcia, the largest of the chain of tropical islands off the tip of India, has supported U.S. military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the U.S. acknowledged it also had been used for clandestine rendition flights of terror suspects.
The official spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Wednesday it was “obviously now right” for Trump’s administration to consider any deal.
“It is perfectly reasonable for the new U.S. 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 U.K.’s best interests and protects our national security.”
Media reports this week had suggested that officials from Britain and Mauritius were hurrying to complete the deal before Trump enters the White House.
Britain 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 Britain evicted up to 2,000 people from the islands so the U.S. military could build the Diego Garcia base.
Mauritius has long contested Britain’s claim to the archipelago, and in recent years the United Nations and its top court have urged Britain to return the Chagos to Mauritius.
Britain agreed to do so in a draft deal in October, but that has been delayed by a change of government in Mauritius and reported quarrels over how much the U.K. should pay for the lease of the Diego Garcia airbase.
A statement issued by the Mauritian government on Wednesday said the Cabinet had been “informed of developments” and that talks in London will continue.
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