UK tells Trump: Don’t worry about our Chagos Islands deal

LONDON — Donald Trump will get behind the U.K.’s controversial decision to hand over the Chagos Islands — home of a secretive U.S. military base — to Mauritius, Britain’s top diplomat predicted.

Despite fierce backlash to the plan from U.S. Republicans, including Trump’s Secretary of State pick Marco Rubio, David Lammy insisted the agreement will get the thumbs-up from the president-elect.

“I’m very confident that when the new administration looks at the detail of this deal that they will stand behind it,” Lammy told the New Statesman. “Donald Trump knows what a good deal looks like and this is a good deal.”

The U.K. agreed to pass sovereignty of the disputed Chagos Islands to Mauritius last month in an agreement hailed as a “seminal moment” by the government in London.

The islands, sometimes dubbed Britain’s last African colony, are home to a joint U.S. and U.K. military base in the Indian Ocean.

Mauritius’ government has long argued it was forced to give the Chagos Islands away in return for its own independence from Britain in 1968. More than 1,000 islanders were forcibly removed at the request of the U.S.

Under the deal, Diego Garcia, the island home to the joint military base, will remain under U.K. and U.S. jurisdiction for at least the next 99 years.

But critics in the U.K. and U.S. argue Britain was under no obligation to respect the advisory opinion, and charge that the government has committed a major tactical blunder that will embolden China.

Rubio told POLITICO last month the deal poses “a serious threat” to U.S. national security and “threatens critical U.S. military posture in the region.” Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage, a leading British ally of Trump, said there was “outright hostility” to the deal among the next U.S. administration and it was an “enormous mistake” to sign the deal before the U.S. election.

But Lammy told the New Statesman: “The most important thing about that deal was securing the naval base and securing that naval base well beyond any of our lifetimes. That secures global security in many, many ways and it certainly keeps that important part of the Indian Ocean out of play for the Chinese.”