UK to review Chagos Islands deal over lack of US support
Baku, September 23, AZERTAC
The UK is reviewing its deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, BBC reported citing UK Defense Secretary Wes Streeting.
Wes Streeting confirmed the deal was being looked at again after US President Donald Trump called it "terrible" at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
The original agreement would see the UK cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius and pay an average of £101m ($136m) per year to lease back a joint UK-US military base there, prized for its strategic location in the Indian Ocean.
In April the deal, agreed under Sir Keir Starmer, was paused indefinitely because Trump pulled his support.
Streeting said "we have to" review the deal "because the United States doesn't support it".
"What President Trump said yesterday wasn't new but I think it does provide absolute clarity that his position on this Chagos deal as currently drafted is not changing," he told BBC Breakfast.
"So we have to do more work with our American allies, with President Trump and his administration, to get the deal to a place where he can support it."
Streeting said the focus now would be to secure a long-term certainty for the base on Diego Garcia, the Chagos archipelago's largest island.
He said it had been the view of every UK prime minister since Boris Johnson that an ongoing legal process - as Mauritius argues it was illegally forced to give away the islands in 1965 to gain independence - risks the security of the base.
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