MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UK government says “no pause” in the Chagos Islands ratification process in Parliament

The Chagos archipelago is best known for its main island of Diego Garcia, which houses a US military base

The UK Parliament is in the process of ratifying to turn control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, but there has been some confusion following different government officials statements.

“UK lawmakers have not halted the ratification process to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius”, the BBC said citing a government source. The report comes a short while after a British Foreign Office minister told lawmakers that UK Parliament pressed pause on the deal for discussion with US counterparts.

”We have a process going through Parliament ​in ⁠relation to the treaty. We will bring that back ⁠to Parliament ​at the appropriate time. We are pausing for discussions with our American counterparts,“ Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer told lawmakers.

The BBC said the government source said there was ”no pause, we have never set a deadline and timings will be announced in the usual way.“

The UK and Mauritius signed an agreement last year to settle the future of the contested Chagos Islands archipegalo, after overcoming many legal targets. 

But US President Donald Trump recently urged UK to scrap the deal. On Truth Social, Trump implored Keir Starmer to scrap the deal, writing: ”DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!“

Trump was referring to the largest island, Diego Garcia, in the chain of islands that make up Chagos. Diego Garcia is home to a vital American military base.

Trump's post came after the US government released a statement in which it said it ”supports the decision of the United Kingdom to proceed with its agreement with Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago.“

The deal signed last year states that the UK will transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. But the UK will retain control of Diego Garcia, which is why it needed approval from Trump.

The Chagos Islands are a strategically situated archipelago, or a chain of islands, in the Indian Ocean. The islands lie halfway between Africa and Indonesia. The archipelago has been under British control since 1814, when it was ceded by France.

The British claimed the Chagos Islands away from Mauritius, a former British colony, in 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence.

Mauritius, an island nation in East Africa, has claimed sovereignty over the islands since gaining independence from British rule.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain evicted as many as 2,000 people from the islands so the US military could build the Diego Garcia base. That ran into major criticism in recent years.

But Chagos Islands, along with other islands in the Indian Ocean, have gained strategic importance because they've become central for global powers like India, US and China to project military prowess in the region.

The US has described the base, which is home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel, as ”an all but indispensable platform“ for security operations in South Asia and East Africa.

Mauritius's Attorney General Gavin Glover said he was not surprised by the minister's comments. ”There has been no discussion on the legislative process for the last three weeks,“ Glover.

”I note that it says a pause from the legislative process and not a backing off. I am in close contact with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.“

When the UK government agreed to hand over control of the islands to Mauritius, it argued the future of the military base had been threatened by recent international court decisions. Under the deal, the UK has agreed to pay £101m annually for 99 years to keep control of the UK-US military base.

However many Chagossians see the deal as a betrayal and want to see the UK retain sovereignty over the islands so they can one day return to their homeland.

The Conservatives and Reform UK are staunchly opposed to the deal as well. MPs from those parties have been travelling to Washington to lobby American politicians, in a campaign aimed building opposition to the agreement in the US.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Reform UK MP Nigel Farage said there was ”no basis, historically, culturally, in any way, for Mauritius to have a claim on those islands“.

He said the region could ”finish up with a turf war going on between India and China in the region“. Farage claimed the Maldives were about to issue a counter-claim to the International Court of Justice over the Chagos Islands in ”just a few days“.

”If anybody has the right to the sovereignty of those islands, it is the Maldives and not Mauritius,“ Farage said. ”And I would urge you to pause all of this.“

Shadow foreign minister Wendy Morton said the Chagos deal would leave Britain ”weaker, poorer and less safe“.

”This is not a legal necessity,“ Morton said. ”It's a political choice made by a floundering prime minister and it's British taxpayers who are left to pay the price.”