Chagos Islands deal sows confusion over UK minister remarks

DW News · Feb 25, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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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," 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." What is the Chagos Islands deal? The UK and Mauritius signed an agreement last year to settle the future of the contested Chagos Islands, after overcoming many legal hurdles. But US President Donald Trump recently urged the 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.What are the Chagos Islands? 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. Indian Ocean a theater of competition 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. Edited by: Sean Sinico