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Britain and Mauritius are mounting a last-minute effort to finalise a deal over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands — and a crucial UK-US military base — as concerns grow that the inauguration of Donald Trump next week could throw it into doubt.
British officials said on Sunday that “good progress” had been made after the UK government offered to frontload a tranche of payments to Mauritius, with a crucial 14th round of talks scheduled ahead of Trump taking office as US president on January 20.
“There’s a sense that we need to get signatures on paper before January 20 — that is the aspiration,” said one British official.
A UK Foreign Office official said: “Good progress has been made and discussions are ongoing to reach an agreement that is in both sides’ interests.”
The Financial Times revealed last week that Britain was offering to pay Mauritius about £90mn a year for the initial 99-year lease of Diego Garcia, the main atoll in the Indian Ocean archipelago, which hosts a strategically crucial UK-US military base.
The offer is seen as a compromise between the new Mauritian administration’s demand to increase the financial settlement underpinning the draft agreement, and the UK government’s refusal to increase the overall cost of the 99-year lease.
Le Week-End, a Mauritian newspaper, reported on Sunday that the two countries could announce a deal early this week after the UK agreed to the front-loading of payments. British officials said that while “a deal is there to be done, it’s not done yet”.
The original deal announced last October promised indexed payments every year for the UK’s lease and other financial support such as funding for infrastructure projects.
Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam rejected the initial deal soon after he swept into power in elections last November, saying the previous government of his long-term rival, Pravind Jugnauth, had failed to get enough out of the UK.
Some senior Trump allies have voiced scepticism about the plan, including the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state Marco Rubio, who claimed it could “provide an opportunity for communist China to gain valuable intelligence on our naval support facility”.
However, British officials expressed some relief that Trump did not raise the issue in a pre-Christmas call with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Kemi Badenoch, Conservative party leader, claimed Starmer was “taking the knee” in international negotiations.
