British prime minister Keir Starmer has urged Mauritius to ensure ‘strong protections’ for the UK-US military base on the Chagos island chain, notably that it is free from China’s ‘malign influence’.
Starmer and his Mauritian counterpart, Navin Ramgoolam, have spoken directly for the first time about the recently concluded Chagos Islands deal, by which the UK would cede the archipelago to Mauritius while keeping control of the military base on the Diego Garcia island for at least 99 years, reportedly paying an annual lease of around £90 million. According to a Downing Street spokesperson, Starmer “underlined the need for a deal to secure the military base on Diego Garcia that ensures strong protections, including from malign influence, and that will allow the base to continue to operate.”
This comes as the deal by which UK agreed to cede its final African colony that was signed last year now hangs in the balance amid criticism and warnings from the team of the new US president Donald Trump that Mauritius’ alliance with China poses a risk to US national security. Starmer agreed the deal following a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019 that the UK should end its control of the territory.
However, changes of government in Mauritius and the United States have since put the deal at risk. For example, US secretary of state Marco Rubio argued last year, when he was a Republican senator for Florida, that the deal was “concerning as it would provide an opportunity for communist China to gain valuable intelligence on our naval support facility in Mauritius”.