The US president earlier called the UK’s plan to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “an act of great stupidity”
The US is weighing a plan to purchase the Chagos Islands directly from Mauritius in a bid to sideline the UK over the future of a crucial military base in the Indian Ocean, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.
The Chagos Islands are home to Diego Garcia, a joint UK-US military base regarded as one of the most important American installations outside the continental US. The facility hosts roughly 2,500 US military personnel and supports B-2 bomber deployments, operations against Houthi targets in Yemen, and has been used in strikes on Iran.
While the Chagos Islands are currently controlled by the UK, London last year approved a plan to hand them over to Mauritius while signing a 99-year lease on the base. The UK’s hand was essentially forced by a decades-long colonial sovereignty dispute, with the International Court of Justice ruling in 2019 that the UK’s 1965 separation of the islands from Mauritius was unlawful and in violation of the right to self-determination.
While US President Donald Trump initially supported the plan, in January he declared the deal “an act of great stupidity” and a threat to national security, while warning that China and Russia “have noticed this act of total weakness.” The UK subsequently put the deal on hold, pending negotiations with the US.
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