Donald Trump has been warned that the Chagos Islands “are not a piece of real estate to be sold off” amid reports the White House is considering purchasing the territory.
As Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to cede British sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius continues to stall, the rumoured proposal would see the US bypass the UK and purchase the island, which is home to the crucial US-UK Diego Garcia military base.
However, Misley Mandarin, the first minister of the Chagossian government in exile, who is already in a legal dispute with the UK government, made it clear that the Trump proposal would be opposed.
He told The Independent: “The Chagos Islands are not for sale and should not be ceded. The only feasible option is the resettlement of British Chagossians in the British Indian Ocean Territory.”
The attempts to end British sovereignty on the islands have seen Democratic Unionist Party peer Lord Peter Weir table a bill in the House of Lords with cross-party support to put a “triple lock”, preventing the sale of the islands to the US or giving them away to Mauritius or any other interested party.
The row began when Sir Keir’s government announced that it would hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and pay £35bn to lease back the base and secure its future.
The UK government maintained that it had to make the deal because of an International Court of Justice ruling in favour of Mauritius’s sovereignty over the islands.
But critics have pointed out that the UK has an exemption on ICJ rulings relating to Commonwealth and former colonial territories. The same exemption also applies to the International Law of the Sea, which the UK government claimed it could face further legal challenges on.
There have been ongoing concerns over whether the loss of sovereignty will open the door for China to get a base on the islands rendering Diego Garcia useless. Also the UK and US would need to tell Mauritius of all operations from the base, including the recent military operations against Iran.
Sources have told The Independent that President Trump did not see a Chagos Islands purchase in the same light as his attempts to bully Denmark into handing over Greenland.
“It was one of the options considered to mitigate against the terrible deal between the UK and Mauritius,” a source said. “It’s no longer on the table”.
The row has fed into the bill tabled by Lord Weir which has come after the government, in effect, suspended attempts to push through the deal with Mauritius.
The Chagos deal was not in the King’s speech and it would require new legislation having failed to pass in the previous parliamentary session.
Lord Weir said: “It is encouraging that it was not in the King’s speech but is disturbing that the UK government has said it has not abandoned the deal.”
His bill would mean that any attempt to remove British sovereignty would require legislation in parliament, agreement from the Chagossan government and a referendum of Chagossans.
It would also fit in with a ruling by the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) court for the UK to allow Chagossans to resettle the islands.
Regarding a sale to Trump and the Mauritius deal, Lord Weir added: “I don’t believe that either people or sovereignty can be up for sale. This is British territory not simply a piece of real estate which can simply be sold off or given away.”
He said that his experiences in Northern Ireland emphasised “the importance of self determination” and said his bill would lay the ground for other protectorates like the Falkland Islands to protect their self determination.