UK puts Chagos Islands handover deal on hold after Trump withdraws support

LONDON — Britain’s deal to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to a strategic Anglo-US military base, to Mauritius is on indefinite hold because US President Donald Trump’s administration has withdrawn its support for the deal.

The British government admitted on Saturday that legislation to ratify the Indian Ocean Islands deal had expired in Parliament.

It is the latest consequence of strained relations between Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government and the Trump administration.

Trump initially supported the deal, but changed his mind in January, calling a deal to transfer sovereignty of the islands, which are home to the Diego Garcia joint military base, “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY” in a social media post.

The UK has suspended progress on the bill and the government now admits it will run out of time to become law before the current parliamentary session ends in the coming weeks. It is not expected to appear in the list of bills announced by King Charles III for the next session of Parliament, which begins on May 13.

Despite British frustration with the change in American position, officials still hope the deal can be revived.

“Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the United Kingdom and the United States,” the British government said in a statement. “Ensuring its long-term operational security is and will continue to be our priority – this is the very reason for the agreement.

“We continue to believe that the agreement is the best way to protect the long-term future of the base, but we have always said that we would only enter into the agreement if it had the support of the United States. We continue to engage with the United States and Mauritius.”

Simon McDonald, who led Britain’s Foreign Office until 2020, said the government “had no choice” but to put the deal on ice.

“When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the government has to rethink. So this agreement, this treaty will be frozen for the moment,” he told the BBC.

This isolated chain of more than 60 islands off the tip of India, south of the Maldives, has been under British control since 1814.

A military base on Diego Garcia, one of the islands, supported U.S. military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan and served as a base for U.S. bombers in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

Starmer initially blocked US planes from using British air bases to attack Iran. He then agreed to allow the United States to use bases in England and Diego Garcia to strike Iranian missile sites, but not other targets.

Trump disparaged America’s NATO allies for their reluctance to join the war. He ridiculed Starmer last month as “not Winston Churchill” and mocked the Royal Navy.

Under the deal reached between the UK and Mauritius after years of negotiations, Britain would lease the Diego Garcia base for at least 99 years.

The Starmer government says the deal protects the base from international legal challenge. In recent years, the United Nations and its highest court have urged Britain to return the islands to Mauritius.

British opposition parties Conservative and Reform UK opposed the deal, saying giving up the islands puts them at risk of interference from China and Russia. They pushed the Trump administration to withdraw its support.

Islanders who were displaced from Diego Garcia in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for the base say they were not consulted and fear the deal will make it harder for them to return home.

An estimated 10,000 displaced Chagossians and their descendants now live mainly in Britain, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Some have fought for many years in the British courts, without success, to obtain the right to return home.