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A bill laying out plans to return the Indian Ocean archipelago, home to the US-UK Diego Garcia base, has been paused.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 11 Apr 2026<\/span>11 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The United Kingdom is setting aside a bill to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius amid a lack of support from United States President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has US support,\u201d a UK government spokesperson said in a statement, according to the Reuters and AFP news agencies on Saturday.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n This followed reports in the UK media that said a bill laying out plans to cede sovereignty of the 60-plus Indian Ocean islands had been dropped from the next parliamentary agenda.<\/p>\n Last May, the UK and Mauritius jointly announced a deal that would return full sovereignty of Chagos to Mauritius, which is some 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) away from the archipelago.<\/p>\n Britain would then pay to lease Diego Garcia \u2013 the largest island and a strategic location in the middle of the Indian Ocean between Asia and Africa, which is home to the military base \u2013 on a 99-year lease to preserve US operations there.<\/p>\n But Trump opposed the move, calling it an \u201cact of great stupidity\u201d in January.<\/p>\n \u201cDiego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US. Ensuring its long-term operational security is and will continue to be our priority \u2013 it is the entire reason for the deal,\u201d the UK government spokesperson added in his statement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are continuing to engage with the US and Mauritius.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement added that the UK \u201ccontinue[s] to believe \u2060the agreement is the best way to protect \u2060the long-term future of the base\u201d.<\/p>\n After Trump\u2019s initial opposition,\u00a0he appeared to momentarily back down in February after speaking with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying Starmer had made the \u201cbest deal he could make\u201d.<\/p>\n But he then attacked the prime minister again on Truth Social weeks later.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is making a big mistake,\u201d Trump wrote, adding that ceding the Chagos Islands would be \u201ca blight on our Great Ally\u201d.<\/p>\n Over the last six weeks, relations between Trump and Starmer have been further strained by the US-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n The UK is now leading a coalition of more than 30 countries to protect vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, without US participation in the initial talks.<\/p>\n Britain has controlled the Chagos since 1814, including after Mauritius gained independence in the 1960s. The Diego Garcia base has played a key role in US military operations in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Chagossians \u2013 thousands of whom were forcibly evicted to make way for the base \u2013 have brought compensation claims to British courts, culminating in a 2019 International Court of Justice recommendation that the archipelago be returned to Mauritius.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A bill laying out plans to return the Indian Ocean archipelago, home to the US-UK Diego Garcia base, has been paused. Published On 11 Apr 202611 Apr 2026 The United Kingdom is setting aside a bill to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius amid a lack of support from United States President Donald Trump. \u201cWe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Big mistake\u2019<\/h2>\n
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